


Otherspace

by EllieCarina



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ahsoka Tano - Freeform, F/M, Inspired by Orpheus and Eurydice (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Star Wars Lore, TW: suicidal thoughts, The Daughter - Freeform, World Between Worlds, because I too am now in the business of subversive endingsTM, because fuck canon amirite, greek tragedy inspired heroes journey with a very untragic cheesy happy ending, i will fix the shit out of this just watch me, rey rides into battle wearing her boyfriend's clothes, rey will get her man, star wars 9 fix it, taking whatever wookipedia gives me and making it work for me, trigger warning suicide attempt, trigger warning: suicidal thoughts, tw: suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:35:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21853810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieCarina/pseuds/EllieCarina
Summary: SPOILERS!!!! DO NOT CLICK IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED THE MOVIE AND DO NOT WANT TO GET SPOILED!!!!!!!!!The summary is inside!!I repeat, this has spoilers for TROS!!!!!!
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 251
Kudos: 628





	1. A New Hope

**Author's Note:**

> FIRST THINGS FIRST: 
> 
> SPOILERS FOR EPISODE NINE!!!!
> 
> AND:
> 
> This chapter has a MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING FOR SUICIDAL THOUGHTS + a SUICIDE ATTEMPT. PLEASE be advised before you read. If you want to read the story but avoid this first chapter due to this content, please message me and I will give you the short, clean version! 
> 
> Thank you!
> 
> ******
> 
> Summary: 
> 
> Once the dust has settled and the rest of the galaxy celebrates freedom at last, Rey falls into a deep depression once the loss of Ben sets in. Distraught, she sees no way out until Luke offers hope - and a chance to get her other half back. She'll take it - even if it means crossing time, space...and even dimensions. She will save Ben Solo.
> 
> Tldr: The did my boy dirty and I'm getting him back.
> 
> ***
> 
> Unbeta'd for now, will edit more when I'm less angry and it's less late. Also, if anyone wants to beta, hmu :)

She’s screaming in her sleep. Screaming and thrashing and she wakes herself up with it, drenched but ice cold and panting. She’s not even half conscious of where or even who she is, but she knows enough to keep screaming, can't do anything but.

“LUKE!“ This is not serenity.

“LEIA!“ This is not salvation.

“LUKE!!!“

Her fingers are twisted into the linen sheets she took with her from the base. They were white once. Now they're covered in ugly yellow stains of dried sweat, smelling rancid and disgusting. Just like her. She doesn’t care. She's too hysterical for that.

“LEIA!“

No one answers. She’s been crying and screaming so much there’s barely anything left to hear anyway. Maybe they really can’t make it out.

They showed up that first day, when she’d been still in shock, still in disbelief that she was even alive. When she declared that she was a Skywalker. They showed up for _that._

Truthfully, she hadn’t felt proper alive then. That came later. When the pain came.

When the two suns had set and the cold fell on Tattoine and she finally whispered _his_ name and he didn’t appear. When she realized that the bond was empty. No, not empty - _bleeding._ Gaping like a wound. When her lips started burning with the memory of a kiss that was going to be their last and her heart constricted, shrunk and shriveled, and the first tear fell. When she staggered back to the cooling desert soil and yanked the lightsabers back from beneath the dirt. When she touched Luke’s. _His._ Like it would maybe make his ghost appear but it didn't.

When she called out again and he wasn’t there. And something, deep in her bones told her he wasn't coming either.

That’s when she knew she was really alive. A moment later was when she wished she was dead, too.

She has no idea how much time had passed since then, neither does she have the capacity to care. The suns rose and she called out to all the Skywalkers she knew off. None showed. No Luke to tell her there was still hope, no Leia to tell her to not be afraid of who she was, no B...it hurts to even think his name.

No _him_ to tell her she wasn’t alone. Because she is. Alone. Yes, her family, the resistance (that now has nothing to resist any longer), they live and they miss her and she’s had to gather the most strength she could muster yet to convince Finn not to come find her. She has them. And she loves them – but they don’t understand. They _couldn’t_ understand. They are their own people. They fought for their lives and they won.

They'd won because they'd never _lived_ like she had, even if just for a moment, just for the length of a kiss. None of them had been two as one and lost that. No one could know what it feels like to not just be one but to be _two_ and to finally be united, whole, after a life of wanting, only to have it yanked away from them in the next moment.

He gave his life for her. Maybe she took so much she even obliterated his ghost? Everything, he’d given _everything_ for her. And for what? The battle had already been won when he made that choice. Why did he bring her back to face the rest of her days without him?

Had he known?

“Did you know?“ she whispers into the dark, stale air scorching her lungs with every shallow breath. "Did you know you were dying for me?“

He had smiled. Like a boy. Like she had never seen him before. The memory cuts through her like a blade, like it’s fresh. Like it just happened. There’s nothing but pain, she can’t even breathe, has no idea how she has tears left but there they are. Fresh and hot and relentless.

She doesn’t know how she falls back asleep, can’t tell if she’s dreaming when she goes back to Exogol, running through rubble, looking for him and finding only dust. She wakes up with dirt in her mouth. BB8 brings her water and bleeps in distress, asking if they can go back now, to their friends. So she can feel better.

“I’m not going back, BB,“ she says. “I’ll tell Poe to come get you, you don’t have to stay here.“

He beeps in protest. If she’s staying he’s staying. She should be touched. But all she really feels is relief that she doesn’t have to see anybody. Doesn’t have to explain to her happy, _whole_ friends that she can’t tell night from day. That she can’t leave her bed. That she did everything she could and saved the galaxy from the Sith and feels like she lost half of herself in the process. They'd been a dyad in the Force. So she _had_ lost half of herself. How could Finn or Poe or Rose ever make sense of that? How could they understand what she felt for Ben Solo? None of them even know that...

That she loves him. _Loved_ him. She always has, probably from the first moment she peered into his head and found herself there. That fact had only recently sunken in. She loved him and now he’s gone.

And no one will tell her where he is! They’ve all deserted her. The _Skywalkers._ She took their name and in turn they took all the wisdom of their infinite Jedi grace with them.

They should _know_ where he went, they should _tell_ her. They owe her at least that! She gets so angry, roughly once a day or night cycle, so angry, she’s started crushing up the ancient equipment of the former Skywalker moisture farm. She curses in every language she knows bad enough to make even the most hardened junk trader blush. All it does is destroy her vocal cords even more. Her old masters don’t show.

Days turn into weeks and she waits for the pain to pass, for the bond to close, for the tears to dry but it doesn’t happen. BB8 forces her to eat and drink, she sleeps with her hand wrapped around Luke’s old saber and when it all gets too much, she pulls a black plain shirt from its treasured air-sealed container, just for a moment to smell smoke and dried sweat and tries to commit it to memory quick enough so it stays present but won’t lose any of the smell. She re-seals it and cries. She couldn’t have left it there on that wretched planet, couldn’t bare to leave them behind. Those clothes that were left as his body faded away, with the ghost of that last smile still on his lips.

The night when it’s the worst it has been yet, the night she gives up on Luke and Leia ever helping her, she pulls the shirt out and puts it on. She lies awake wrapped in it, weeping, and when the suns come up, it smells like _her._ That’s when it’s darkest. And no stars shine. And she knows they will never shine again, not for her. This world isn’t made for her. Not meant for her, not anymore.

He should’ve let her go. He meant well, he loved her enough to want her to go on, he probably thought she'd be fine without him. He had breathed the rest of his life into her not knowing that it was barely a life he left her with.

The morning after is the first one she leaves the bed in however many weeks. BB8 stirs in his corner.

Apart from trying to feed her, he’s been idle, save for trying to clean up after Rey were she did her business in the courtyard like an animal. She hadn’t cared, hadn’t even felt dirty or ashamed. It hadn’t mattered. Nothing matters.

BB beeps. “Are we going home now?”

She musters a half smile. “You are.” He tilts his head and body in question.

“I need you to clean up a little for me and when you’re done, I want you to send a message to the base and tell Poe to come get you.” The droid is still not happy with that answer. “There’s something I have to do. Alone. Tell them not to worry. I’ll….be back before they know it.”

“Promise?” he beeps.

“Yeah,” she says.

She’s lying.

As she leaves the droid behind, heading out of the hut, filthy as she is, she has no plans to come back.

She should be stronger, maybe, but she doesn’t have another fight in her. She’s given too much, there’s nothing left. All she wants to do is close her eyes and fade away like Ben did. _Ben._ She thinks his name like a mantra, like a prayer, as she walks and walks through the desert. There's no one but her. No one to stop her, no one who knows her. Or him. 

Ben. 

Ben, Ben, Ben. Her Ben.

“Maybe I’ll see you again now, Ben” she whispers when she arrives at last a the foot of a large mountain, the highest she could see from the distance. Now that she’s made up her mind, his name feels lighter in her mind. Now that she knows it won’t remind her of what she lost for very much longer, she can think it again, say it again. Now that she lets it, she can feel the bond hum with his memory, feel his energy, the echo of it, can recall how it buzzed around her skull when he was still around.

How it felt that day. When she won him, when she lost him. When she felt his presence much stronger than Palpatine’s and how it had changed. How his conflict had disappeared, how she had sensed that he was himself again - that he was so much more than she’d known. That he was funny, of all things, had swagger like his father, that he was _hers_ , truly. The other end of that bond, the empty one, flares up and it’s wonderful.

_I’ll be with you soon_ , she thinks, climbing.

Fine, she is imagining this, because obviously he’s gone. She’s not really feeling him, he’s not really on the other end of the bond anymore. But now that she’s almost with him, in a way, she can fool herself a little while longer into thinking he is. That he's the other side. Wherever she’s going now. Maybe in the great nothingness beyond, she’ll find him again after all. Who could say?

And if she doesn’t, at least she’ll be free of the pain.

“I’m coming,” she says and arrives on the top of the mountain, on the edge of its sharp cliff, her voice steady, for the first time in weeks.

Before her, an endless valley of sand opens. She doesn’t need to look down to know. The height will do the job.

She takes a deep breath, then a step forward and spares no more thought before she takes another one and—

—just when she starts to fall, weightless for a moment, before gravity takes her, something pulls her back. Not just pulls but _throws._ Hard. With a grunt, she lands on the red rocks, pebbles needling her bottom, and the source of this backward thrust is gaping at her in exasperation.

“What are you doing?!” Master Luke asks her, incredulously.Sudden rage propels her back to her feet, she's not thinking straight. How _dare_ he?

“NOW you show up? I’ve been calling you for weeks! Now I don’t need you anymore! I don’t _want_ your help anymore. Let me _go!_ ”

She makes another advance on the cliff’s edge but he yanks her back yet again. Harder this time - but she remains upright, having known it was coming. The gall on this man, If he weren't dead already, she'd surely kill him now!

“Let me go!” She growls and then, as quickly as it came, her strength dissipates again. There was no way she could have kept this up anyway. All that is left to do is plead with him. Ask for mercy, ask for permission to _die._

“Let me go _please_ , I can’t do this anymore.”

Luke's face softens instantly. Cautious, he approaches slowly, as if not to startle her, as if she were a rabid animal. She feels like one.

When he speaks, his voice is full of compassion. “Oh, Rey.”

“Where is _he_?” And just like that she’s crying again. She can’t help but ask now, can’t help but hope Luke knows. “Is he with you? Is he okay? Or is he really gone?”

“No one and nothing is ever really gone,” Luke replies and she wants to scream.

“I don’t need that,” she grits out, barely able to form a sentence. “I don’t need platitudes. I need to _know._ ”

“He’s not…with us,” Luke says, to his credit not stalling. That doesn’t mean hearing it doesn’t hurt like acid dripping down her spine. She's dreaded this most of all. That Ben's spirit wasn't just eluding her but that he was really, actually gone. Like he'd never existed at all.

“So he _is_ gone?” She asks, one last time. Just to be sure, just so Luke understands why she wants him to let her be. “So you know that you have to let me go, too? We were meant to be _one,_ Luke. I can’t do this," she gestures around herself, all lost and futile. "Without him…”

“Rey, wait,” her master says, holding out his hand. “He’s not with us. But he _should_ be. It is said that if Jedi die at one with the Force they might pass on and into it but Ben…Ben wasn’t at one with it, he gave his Life Force _up_ to you, he didn’t become one with it, he _parted_ with it. So he should be with us but he isn’t. This means that he…wherever he went, he didn’t join us. And if he couldn’t join us, he should’ve _died_ …stayed. His body should have remained there with you, in the flesh…I don’t know what to tell you. I didn’t know how to–” He stops himself, shakes his head as if he is warring with something and Rey forgets to breathe. Something tiny tugging at her insides at his words. Coming alive slowly.

Luke looks at her intently and then apparently decides to tell her whatever it is he couldn’t before. “Leia has a theory. But I must admit that I did not want to tell you this because I think it’s too dangerous. Because knowing you, you’ll go looking for him out there and risk your life...but then again, seeing as you’re up here…I guess it doesn’t make a difference, does it?” Another sigh and Rey’s lungs fill on their own accord, the valley below her seeming to fade into the distance bit by bit, losing its beckoning call. What does Luke know? What does Leia suspect?

“There have been talks for some time…by some cooky theorists –they called themselves scholars, I sure never thought they were but apparently my sister did– that there is a…breach, a bridge, of sorts, to another plain. Of existence. Another dimension, so to speak. And _if_ that exists, which, if it does, is dangerous to try and find…maybe there _is_ a way that Ben’s vanishing could be connected with that. There’s an old, all but forgotten Force power called Dimension Shift. I’ve only ever read about it. Use of the power would shift an amount of inanimate matter either into an alternate dimension or compressing the molecules, making it completely vanish.”

He pauses. And Rey remembers the exact page in the old Jedi texts where she had read about it, too. Luke eyes her wearily but she only glares at him, daring him to go on.

“Now, if, and that’s a big IF, Ben was…you see, if something had cracked in the Force and dimension-shifted _him when he was dead_ , and thus _technically_ , inanimate matter, it’s possible that he might have crossed over into that other dimension, _Otherspace_ , they call it. And maybe, if he’s frozen there in this inanimate state, it might be possible to bring him back…and save him. But that’s just Leia’s hypothesis. And it's a lot of if's. You’d be going out on a complete limb.”

Rey’s heart is beating faster. She stands up straighter. For the first time in forever, she feels something other than dread, feels some warmth return to her cheek, feels a feathered thing flapping its wings inside her. _Hope._

“Don’t look at me like that,” Luke says, his whole face a cautioning tale. “I don’t know if this Otherspace even exists and I don’t know how to get to it. It is not known that Jedi can dimension-shift themselves, only objects, so you would need to find that bridge to cross over and then navigate, safely, whatever that dimension is. And then it’s not promised that he’s even there, or in which state, that you could even find him…”

“But Leia thinks I might be able to?” Rey asks, perking up even further, if that’s even possible.

Luke nods.

“That’s enough for me.” And she means it. What else is she going to do? Leave tonight and hope against hope that Ben might still be out there _somehow_ or fling herself off the cliff and hope that he might be down at the bottom of the mountain in oblivion. One of these choices might mean he’s _alive._ That’s the one she choses. She couldn’t ever _not._

“I was worried you were going to say that,” her old master sighs, sounding more like a ghost than ever before. “Fine. You need to talk to Maz. If anyone has a hookup for what you’ll need for this mumbo-jumbo _fishing expedition,_ it’s her. That _bridge_ is supposed to be somewhere in the Moddell Sector.”

“The Outer Rim,” Rey mutters, thinking back to Exogol, where she’d lost Ben. “The Unknown Regions are close to that…if he’d been pulled from there to the bridge maybe? It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Luke says, somewhat deflated but definitely honest.

“I’ll have to find out,” she says softly. “I have to try.”

Luke looks at her for a long moment, like he’d known this was going to happen. Like he’s been trying to make peace with it for a while. Rey can’t help but smile, just a little. It feels foreign on her face now. Foreign, but good.

“We’re _one,_ him and I. He’s a part of me. If he’s still out there…if anyone can find him, it’s me.”

“I know, kid,” Luke says. “I’m just worried about you.” Then he glances behind him, at the abyss, that now seems lightyears away. “But I ought to have been way _more_ worried about not telling you about Leia's theory as it seems.”

“I’m sorry I scared you,” Rey mutters sincerely.

“I’ve never been in love,” Luke says. A sudden change of trajectory that throws Rey momentarily. “So I don’t think, I can ever truly understand what you’re feeling…but I know what it's like to lose people you care about deeply…and I know it can be unbearable. So you have my blessing. You’re right, Rey. If anyone can find Ben, it’s you.”

“I will,” she nods, promising him, promising Leia, promising Ben and promising _herself._ “I will find him and I _will_ bring him back…even if I have to put him back together molecule by molecule, I swear I will.”

There’s a rumbling somewhere in the pit of her stomach, a fierce growl. It’s the fight returning to her, incidentally at the same time as her appetite, and then she dares tug at the bond, examine it truly, for the first time. She looks at the wound, at the gnawing, biting emptiness and there it is - and maybe she’s just imagining it, but maybe it’s real - his signature. Faint but…around. Maybe fizzled, maybe not quite solid. But not gone, no. _Not gone._

At least that’s what she tells herself, she has to if she wants to embark on a quest to bend time and space and even dimensions to get her other half back. Her lungs crack with a new breath taken, flooded with hope. Rey is on a mission. Starting now. And nothing and no one will stop her.

_I’ll find you, Ben. I know I will._

She takes her next steps. Off the mountain, on to her destiny.


	2. The Lyra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all your feedback! I am happy I could help even a little. I know MY heart is still breaking, mostly because I don't react well to unfairness and Ben's "end" was the epitome of that.
> 
> So I am glad that you're all joining me in ignoring the f*ck out of that trashfire-ending. We simply won't accept it, so now Rey gets a proper heroes' journey and we will get our HEA - I promise you this and it doesn't even hurt to end a story like that because happy endings are GREAT. 
> 
> Anyway...we are marching on. We are all Rey, saving her mans *-*
> 
> Thank you to my beta cookie for her wonderful work and thank all of you guys for every single review, they fuel me just as much as my anger does to make me write faster!

Rey arrives back at the moisture farm barely in time to keep BB8 from contacting Poe to come collect him. Instead, she sends a transmission herself, telling her friends that she’ll come visit them on Takodana, where Maz has started rebuilding her cantina.

When the enthused replies reach her, she has showered and cleaned her clothes for the first time in ages and is already strapped back into the pilot seat of the _Falcon_. It’s weird being this vibrant again, having this sort of purpose. Like she’s only now been given that second chance at life. It's the first time it feels like there’s a reason she stayed behind, alive. So she could get him back and they could both live - _together._ Moving fast, she punches in the coordinates for Takodana and leaves Tatooine with a soft last glance and Ben's lightsaber in her scavenging bag.

The trip through hyperspace is uneventful and even a little short for her taste. If she’s honest, she would have liked a little more time to prepare. It’s been months now that she hasn’t talked to another human and she doesn’t know how to face her friends. What if they see what she’s become? What she had been willing to do? She glances down at BB8 on the co-pilot seat as they make planetfall. He thinks he’s sly scanning her vital signs. But she knows he must pick up on the sudden burst of energy radiating from her. He’s been rightfully worried about her but seems appeased now.

It’s a good thing she had reworked the controls so that a droid was all she needed to maneuver the _Falcon_ a couple of months ago, it gave her the autonomy she had craved, the means to get away. Yes, the resulting solitude had nearly driven her mad but she knows she wouldn’t have fared any better surrounded by friends.

If anything, their happiness probably would have made her own misery all the more apparent to her. Her stomach turns ever so slightly as the dropship-door opens to a breezy but humid day on Takodana, and it’s still flipped when Finn, Rose and Poe huddle onto the metal, heavy boots clinking, and hug her all at once.

Wedged between them, she spots Zorii a few paces away the new cantina at her back, dressed in civilian clothing, and waving at her. The other woman is not big on physical affection but Rey isn’t offended. The only thing that stings for a second is the brief sense of having been replaced. Poe, Finn, Rose and her had been somewhat of a unit before, even if she had butted heads with Poe more often than not, but now it looks like Zorii took over her spot quite seamlessly.

It’s probably no wonder and it would have happened with or without Rey there. She’d never quite fit in all the way with them. Like a slightly askew puzzle piece that slotted in okay but only really fell into place with one unique other, one mirror piece. It’s no use lingering on that though as she lets herself be swept away by the group. While BB8 shoots right for Poe to beep his ‘ _Have you missed me?_ ’s, Rey is dragged forward by Rose and her comforting smile. Easily, as if they were ancient friends, Rose links arms with her and wastes no time filling her in on all that she missed.

Somehow she ends up with only Finn who insists they get some street meat in the ruins of the old courtyard because she “looks famished”. She doesn’t doubt it and it’s been a while since she’d proper _wanted_ to eat. The nubu drumsticks he’d ordered for her taste divine and Finn knows her hungry self well enough to let her finish stuffing her face before he asks how she’s doing. She shrugs, mostly because she is still chewing the last bit of nubu.

“You got so skinny… don’t have great food on Tatooine, huh?” Finn asks and she shrugs again. This time it’s because she doesn’t have the heart to tell him she quite deliberately wasted away for the better part of the past month. He notices.

“Are you okay?” He’s trying to sound noncommittal but she can hear the concern in his voice loud and clear.

“Yes,” she says stiffly, rocking a bit on the bar stool she’s sitting on, elbows propped on a grimy wooden table. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Rey…,” he chides and then a taxing glance travels up and down her face, much like Luke had looked at her on the mountain. Like maybe she would break apart if he said the wrong thing. Skies, was she that obviously broken?

“What?” She’s curt, which she hopes will read as confident indifference.

“You’re _not_ okay.” 

Well, obviously it doesn’t. So she rather stays silent and chews on her lip.

“Do you want to know what I wanted to tell you in that sand pit on Pasaana?” Finn asks, trying a different tactic. She bites and nods, so he goes on. “I wanted to say that I knew about you and Re– Ben. And that I wasn’t judging you. That I love you no matter what.”

Unsure what he is getting at and honestly a little swamped with this information in general, Rey’s only response is to stare back at him blankly.

“So _now_ I’m telling you so you can tell me that you’re sad,” Finn adds and suddenly it makes sense.

“BB8 sent you updates on me, didn’t he?” Rey mutters. “The little spy.”

“You wouldn’t get in touch with us at all,” Finn says quickly, an edge of defensiveness to his tone. “We were worried about you. We still are.”

“What do you mean ‘knew about me and Ben’ anyway?” Rey asks, hoping to derail that line of questioning for a while longer. Performing nonchalance, she stares off into the woods where she’d seen Kylo Ren for the first time. A million years ago.

“Come on, Rey,” Finn sighs. “You were talking about him in your sleep at night. You… skies, sometimes during the day it sounded like you were talking _to_ him. And whenever he got remotely close to us you would go completely out of commission. The look on your face… when Lando held his eulogy at the base… it was like you weren’t there.”

“I don’t even remember that,” she admits. She doesn’t remember much of the aftermath of the final battle if she’s honest.

“I understood you needed to be on your own for a while to…get over whatever you had with him, so we all tried to give you your space,” Finn says and then tilts his head a little, smiling encouragingly. “But it’s real good to have you back with us, Rey.”

She turns her head to look at him and that’s all it takes.

“You’re not staying,” Finn says, a statement of fact.

“There’s something I have to do,” she tells him. “I have to…try and get him back.”

“What? But he’s dead? You said he was dead.”

“Leia thinks there might be a way to get him back, that he might’ve been transported to a… different dimension. If I can get there, I could save him, maybe.”

“Different dimension, what now?” Finn sits up straighter, suddenly apprehensive.

“There’s a way to cross over,” she says and immediately knows it’s not helping. “It’s been done hundreds of years ago.”

“That’s why you’re here,” Finn realises. “You’re not here for _us._ You want Maz! Because she knows all this whacky ancient stuff!”

The disappointment in his words cuts deep. But he has to _understand._

“Finn, I…” Where to begin? How to make him see? “What Ben and I had, what we were, that wasn’t just a fascination or some weird attraction. We were two pieces of one… being. We belonged together and when he saved me… we were whole. I was whole. For the first time in my life. And he saved me… he came back from me when there was nothing to come back to. I was dead, Finn. I died and he brought me back. And if there’s a chance that he is still out there somewhere, I have to find him. I have to go back for him, too.”

Finn’s face is hard, an argument brewing. “Look, I’m not saying I’m not happy he saved you, that was good, a good thing. But he… Rey, the things he did–”

“Stop,” she snaps. “I’m not having this discussion again. If it wasn’t for him we would all be dead. Palpatine had warped him since he was a baby, since before he was born. He never had a choice. He never had anybody know what he went through, not really. And yeah, he did terrible things but he changed. He saved _all_ of us. And I–” 

Rey stops short, choking up. She’d been fine uptil now but the sadness rears its head again when she has to defend Ben, again, to people who should know better. To people who should understand forgiveness. Which is why she decides to just say it. Whatever Finn might make of it. However sick he might think she is.

“And I _love_ him,” she declares and slips from the barstool, squaring her shoulders. “I love him and I want him back. I need him, more than you know, Finn. And you can either get behind it or get out of my way.”

Her best friend swallows hard and for a split second she thinks he might really tell her off but half a moment later his face softens and he shakes his head. “Okay. I’ll get you to Maz.”

They’re halfway through the remains of the castle catacombs on the way to Maz’ quarters when he speaks again. “I’m sorry. I spent most of my life hating Kylo Ren. Give me a moment to get used to you being in love with Ben Solo. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I know,” Rey says. “It’s just…you don’t know how it feels. It’s like a part of me is missing. I can’t explain it.”

“I think I get it,” he says and sounds solemn. But Rey doesn’t get to comfort him or ask what he means, because that’s when he knocks at a small wooden door and then ducks out of the way. Leaving Rey her privacy with Maz. 

Rey doesn’t deserve him. Stubborn and confrontational as he is, he’s always been looking out for her. She just hopes one day he’ll understand why she has to do the things she has to do. Maz understands before she even finished explaining, having sat her down on a rather uncomfortable chair in front of the way oversized desk in her dark, cluttered impromptu office.

“Let’s see, have I got this? You want to cross over into Otherspace to look for Ben because Leia thinks he might’ve been pulled there instead of dying?” Maz summarises, cutting Rey’s monologue short, rendering her mute and nodding.

“And you need me to tell you where and how exactly to do that?”

Rey agrees again.

“Good,” Maz nods. “I can work with that. But first you need a ship. There is no way you can fit through a rift in time and space with the _Falcon_. You need a hyperspace-ready shuttle, something small and fast. And you know, I think I might have just the perfect candidate!”

Maz’ tiny eyes are twinkling - and they still are when she presents Rey with a dirty old roastbucket, bulbous, golden-orange coloured and tiny, parked in a shallow cave a few minutes by foot from the cantina.

“What do you think?” The alien asks, peeking up at her expectantly. Rey doesn’t have the heart to tell her the truth… but she still needs to know if this thing could even break atmosphere unscathed.

“Don’t look at her like that,” Maz says, reading Rey’s expression effortlessly. “Don’t judge a book by its cover. She might look dingy but she’s packing heat. She’s fast and mobile. Take her for a spin, see if you can work with her.”

“What’s her name?” Rey asks, not convinced but willing to at least give it a try. 

“ _The Lyra_ ,” Maz says. “Been with me for many years. And Rey? If you take her out there, I want her back. With you in it, understand?”

“Yes.” Rey nods. “I’m not planning on getting lost.”

“Good,” Maz says. “And you’ll stay here tonight, get some food in you, strength for the journey. No leaving tonight.” Nothing there is framed as a question and Rey understands as much.

“Very well,” Maz says. “You try her and if you’re happy I’ll tell you how to get to Otherspace without killing yourself.”

To Rey’s surprise, the _Lyra_ really is all Maz promised and more. _One_ , she’s more spacious than her cracked interior suggests. The cockpit for a single pilot is the perfect size for her to reach everything and still be able to move and in the back, there’s a small kitchen station and two cots in the walls. Not luxurious but more than she expected. And _two_ , Maz hasn’t lied when she said the ship is fast, because damn. Plus it steered well and went into orbit with ease. 

Flying the thing was like slicing a hot knife through butter - and Rey had so much fun figuring out just the right buttons to push and levers to pull to make the _Lyra_ sing, that she came late to her own celebratory dinner.

Maz had her cook prepare a feast, more than Rey could hope to eat but more than enough to stock her little ship well for a journey and the evening was pleasant, a welcome memory of the old days, those few scarce pleasant nights when the First Order had been idle and the Resistance had a moment to just breathe. That’s what it feels like now, a deep breath before going underwater. 

After dinner, Maz pulls her aside to tell her all she knows about Otherspace, which is an impressive amount, and Rey has trouble falling asleep after, still mulling over everything she learned. Laying wrapped in thick sheets, she plans out her journey in her head. Come morning, she feels ill-prepared still but resolved. No going back now. She isn’t even particularly afraid of the outcome. The only thing that actually scares her is the possibility of never seeing her friends again. 

Saying goodbye to them outside Maz’ cave, she won’t let them see that fear, though. Finn looks worried enough for the both of them. 

“Be careful out there,” he says, pulling her into a tight hug. Tight enough she gets the sense he doesn’t really want to let go.

“I will,” she promises and finally Finn lets her go to say goodbye to the rest, kneeling down before Maz last.

“Remember what I told you,” she says. “Find the zipper, open the zipper, close the zipper.”

It’s easy enough to recall. If Rey doesn’t spend too much time getting distracted by tearful goodbyes. Which is why she cuts those short, hugs everyone again, hard and quick and then boards the _Lyra_ , careful to cast one last look on her friends and commit their faces to memory.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come?” Finn asks, Rey’s hand already on the hydraulics-button of the dropship door.

“I have to do this alone,” she says and flashes her best reassuring smile. “I’ll come back. It’ll be fine. Just look after the _Falcon_ for me.”

**

Breaking atmosphere, Rey finally banishes thoughts of her friends out of her head, turning her focus back on her mission. Punching in the coordinates for Endor once more, she remembers what Maz had told her about Otherspace.

It had begun as a history lesson, about how for eons, “Otherspace” had just been an idea, a theory nobody cared much to prove. It was thought of like a thin layer of icing inside a cake, wedged between two layers of batter. On the bottom, there was realspace, the world Rey and Maz and everyone alive inhabited and on top was hyperspace, a place where time moves faster, where you got by hyperspeed, cutting through Otherspace in the middle. Theoretically. 

For the longest time, Otherspace had just been an offhand-concept to try and explain why ships sometimes jumped into hyperspeed and never made it there or out again. The hypothesis was that they’d gotten stuck in the inbetween. But Maz had told Rey that it was only proven to be real when an ancient civilisation, the Charr Ontee of Kathol, sentient arachnoids genetically engineered by the Precursors of Kathol as agricultural workers, caused the Rift Disaster of Kathol, effectively tearing a hole into the “edges” of realspace, allowing many Charr Ontee ships to “flip” into Otherspace. 

Inside this other galaxy, which was said to be dark mirror of the realspace one, littered with black holes, vortexes, shipwrecks and silvery fog, the Charr Ontee had eventually become the Charon, a species that grew to worship death and recognised its purpose in destroying whatever life they encountered in this Otherspace.

Once Maz finished telling her all _that_ , Rey had already started to drift off. Mostly because she’d still been imagining battle ships flipping into icing inside of a cake. 

“Theoretics,” Maz had said then, sensing Rey’s overwhelmedness. “What is important is to know how to get there. Few people have tried and fewer have come back to tell the tale. The most obvious point of entry would be the Kathol Rift but, if you paid attention, you’ll know it’s Charon territory on the other side. You’d be zipping up space and fall right into their lap. No, you need to take the less travelled path - a smaller rift, lesser known. You need to go into Ewok territory, back to the ruins of the Death Star, to Endor in the Moddell Sector. Luke did get that bit right. Now let me tell you what he doesn’t know.”

Maz paused for effect and then leaned forward towards Rey, growing a few inches. “There is a myth the Ewoks tell their unruly children about an evil band of monsters that fall from the sky and sow chaos and misery if the pups misbehave. They call them the Wizards of the Night Spirit and it’s a silly old story that nobody puts much stock in – but they’re wrong. You see, it’s all true.” Maz gave Rey a moment to let all that sink in, the old crone growing more and more animated, excited to share her millenia old knowledge. 

“The wizards once lived on Endor and ages ago they fought a bitter battle with Ewok shamans of Bright Tree Villiage. At the end of it, the Ewoks banished the Wizards to Otherspace, opening a rift in the galaxy with the help of an artefact called the Sunstar. The wizards were forced to dwell on Endor’s mirror world on the other side. They simply called it Otherworld. _That’s_ where you’ll cross. You must find the most lush and alive place on that moon, because where you want to go, is the exact opposite of that: a devastated wasteland filled with bones of dead animals and no vegetation. You’ll feel the fracture in the fabric of the galaxy, you’ll feel it in the Force. And then you concentrate, rip it open, like a zipper. Slip inside and zip it closed behind you and you're there. Easy.”

“Easy… yeah,” Rey had repeated, still very much overwhelmed because it all sounded like an ancient, silly legend. “Well, if that’s easy, what is the hard part?”

“The hard part is finding Ben in there. And even _I_ have no idea how to help you with that, girlie. But I have an idea who might. If you are persuasive.”

“The Wizards of the Night Spirit?” Rey tried and Maz had looked pleased.

“Ah, you _do_ pay attention,” she praised, with a glint in her eye. “Good. Yes, ask the wizards. But be careful, I heard they bite.”

**

Blasting the _Lyra_ out of hyperspeed, Rey still has to chuckle a bit about Maz’ excitement and the whole story about biting nightmare Ewoks is so ridiculous, it makes the whole thing seem less scary. And Rey embraces that. Because if she dwells too long on the fact that she is about to cross into a grimy, scary, horrid dimension full of black holes and killer humanoid spiders, her throat closes off and the smile dies on her face. 

Careful not to arouse any attention, she chooses the poles of the moon to make planetfall and stays up high in the stratosphere, mostly hidden behind a flurry of clouds and scans quadrant after quadrant of the surface, looking for the lushest, most beautiful place to attempt a cross-over.

She is doing fine with it, too. Right until the giant ruins of the Death Star come into view and she is struck by the memories of that place. About her battle with Kylo Ren there, the last one. When she wounded him as Leia gave her life to save them both. Rey had healed him and told him what he already knew. That she had always wanted to take his hand, that she wanted to be with him. With Ben Solo, the man she knew was still inside him. And after that, somehow, he’d turned.

Leia had died so her son could come back to the light and he had. And Rey had thanked her for it by killing him. Tears prickle in the corners of her eyes again as she steers the _Lyra_ away from the wreckage. There’s no time for this, no time at all to fall apart again. So she orders herself to focus and trains her eyes on the horizon. Unfortunately, her eyes turn out to be rather useless because it’s getting dark outside.

“Be with me,” she whispers, changing her plans, and calls upon the thousands of generations of Jedi come before her, trying to concentrate, let the Force guide her to the rift. “Be with me,” her focus is zeroing in, she’s just following a beckoning call. “Be with me.” Ben, she thinks. “Be with me.” Show me how to find you. “Be with me.” South, she thinks. And then ahead. 

Southwest next, along the equatorial line, escaping the falling night, on top of the densest wood she has ever seen, the treetops so high and so green, they look like a giant, mossy blanket was carefully draped on top of the planet. And above, crackling in the air...the _rift._ A tender spot that has broken open before and been mended again many times. She flies a circle, keeping the ship afloat while testing out the edges of the tear, trying to find a loose thread and unravel it.

Slowly, carefully, making sure to keep it tiny. Just big enough for her ship. She only feels it opening. save from a bluish glow in the sky, which could as well be a light reflection, nothing is visible. The hole in the fabric of the galaxy is only a feeling but one she is sure about.

This is where it starts, she thinks as she steers her ship towards the rift, pulling at the Force, making herself become one ball of energy encased in metal. It’s just matter passing through matter, she reminds herself. The zipper is down and next thing she knows, she’s slipped through. 

To the other side. _Zip it closed, before you get distracted._

And then she is encased and crossed over, still in one piece but, boy, she’s not on Endor anymore. All around her is darkness. Grey mist and rubble. Silver lightning. Giant carcasses littering the crackled stony surface of the Otherworld miles and miles below, so huge, she can still make out eye-sockets.

There’s no sun in Otherspace. Behind her, the tear is closing, the last rays of light fading behind her as it does. Rey doesn’t dare to look behind her. She’s here now. It’s only forward from here on out. She gives herself a second to gather her wits, to realise that she made it across. That she reached another plain of existence. That now she has the chance to save Ben, to bring him back home. 

That there is no past now, only the next steps. No _behind_ her, only _ahead_.

And if she turns around, she’s lost.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Wizards of the Night Spirit](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Wizard_of_the_Night_Spirit)  
> [Otherworld](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Otherworld)
> 
> **
> 
> Maybe you can see I determined the length...I think 8 chapters will suffice to tell the story :)  
> Also also: the wizards of the night spirits are from a cartoon which means they are super campy but let's all pretend together that they are a little creepy and scary, yes?
> 
> Thank you all! <3


	3. The Wizards of the Night Spirit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, in a weird turn of events, I am actually starting to have real fun with this. Taking the campiness of the Wizards of the Night Spirit (seriously, look at [them](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/c/c5/Wizards6.JPG/revision/latest?cb=20070416152141)), I tried to bring a little fun into this chapter and I hope it shows. 
> 
> I am still trying to give you the tragic with the fun because that's Star Wars for you (and because I want to prove that you can do that and still tell a cohesive story, hopefully).
> 
> As always, I am deeply grateful for every one of you readers - and a big thank you to my fabulous beta Cookie.

The eerie silence that fell over everything as the tear in space behind Rey closed ends a few heartbeats later as the _Lyra’s_ alarm systems go off. Everything that can flash in warning flashes, every module that can sound distressed does and Rey is immediately alert. 

She checks all basic functions, steers the ship left a little, then right and waits for a plunge downward, which is something that must happen, if all the error messages have merit. But nothing moves. So Rey tries her damnedest to stay calm and pulls at levers, flips switches and runs a complete system check that comes out disastrously.

Basically, she should be dead. The fact that she isn’t as well as the fact that the _Lyra_ is still fully intact, tells her that the system is wrong, which is disconcerting but infinitely better than if it was accurate. 

She makes quick work of switching off the alarms and when nothing explodes or disintegrates for another minute or so, she takes a breath and then puts the ship into a nosedive, making sure not to crash into any monster skulls on the way down and then steadies the ship again, looking for a safe place to land. Between two especially knotted, spiky skeletons, a small valley presents itself upon closer inspection and it feels right to land the _Lyra_ there, inconspicuously right next to a charred piece of bone, a set of _hips_ , if Rey had to guess. 

The landing is safe and seems to have gone unnoticed by whatever creatures might be lurking in the plethora of shadows and thus she allows herself another moment to plan out her next steps methodically. Seeing outside is a feat. The darkness reminds her of Exogol, mostly because the only proper light source are the flashing silver bolts of lightning that cut through the misty sky high above every few seconds. Given that she’ll have a hard time navigating her path in these circumstances, it would make sense to not give any would-be assailant the chance to spot her before she can spot them, which means that her white robes have to go.

As soon as the decision is made, she unclips from the pilot seat and makes her way to the living compartment. She grabs her bag from a crevice by her sleeping cot and rummages around in it until her fingers touch the cool metal of the air-sealed container that holds Ben’s black clothes, undresses swiftly and slips them on. 

She’s swimming in his trousers which doesn’t come as a surprise. To make them stay up, she rips a strip of her bed linen off and uses it as a belt, fastening the pants beneath her breasts. Her brown boots will have to make do because his shoes are truly about five sizes too large. His shirt sits on her frame like a dress, fitting well and keeping her warm, even if one shoulder keeps dropping down. The round hole that she burned into it with his lightsaber as she struck him on the ruins of the Death Star had been around the height of Ben’s ribcage, on her it’s beside her navel. She runs her fingertips over the burnt fizzled edge of the fabric and bites the inside of her cheek hard. 

Maybe if she hadn’t struck him and didn’t have to heal him after, she would have had enough strength to survive Palpatine on her own. Maybe he wouldn’t have had to save her then. As sadness beckons, she fights to urge to give into it. She can’t change the past. All she can do is try to fix the future. Her fists unclench from the shirt, she smoothes it out and goes on about getting dressed. Once her boots, leather belts and scavenger bag are back on in their usual places, she re-does her hair. Just a high knot at the top of her head, keeping the hair out of her face that had grown long and curly during her time on Tatooine.

A brief glance into the reflecting viewpoint off to the side by the second cot shows very few light spots to draw attention in the dark, which means she is good to go. She looks at her face for a moment, slightly blurred from the viewer’s thick, not-quite-glass-material. Once again, she's alone. Just like in the cave on Ach-To. Funny how when she'd finally found something to belong to and held it tight in her grasp, something that was truly _hers_ , she immediately had to lose it again. The cruelty of it is etched into the lines on her forehead.

She looks older, she thinks. Like the months of grief have eaten away at her. It’s just as well, she hasn’t felt her age in a long time anyway. Still, like a child in need of reassurance, she nods at herself and wants more than anything to not let the person staring back at her down. Or Ben. Thinking of him she almost has to smile for a moment, wondering what he’d say seeing her dressed in his clothes. She hopes beyond hope that she will find out.

Readying herself, she puts away everything important she can't take with her, grabs her saberstaff and moves to the exit latch at the rear of the cabin. The oxygen-meter embedded in the floor shows 100% toxicity combined with a total lack of breathable air outside which, seeing as all the other systems have shown the exact opposite of what seems to be happening, means she should be okay to breathe outside. She still opens the latch carefully and just a little bit at first. But she was right not to worry.

It’s the same atmosphere that Endor has, only that instead of wood, the air smells like sulfur and smoke. When her feet land in ankle-deep, tar-black ashes, she figures that makes sense. 

Coughing, and trying to be quiet about it, she closes her ship back up and twists the hydraulic wheel at the bottom of the latch to seal it shut. She presses her thumb into the biometric reader in the middle, waiting for the click of the locking mechanism, careful that no one but her can get in. This ship is her lifeline and if anything ever happened to it, she’d be trapped here in this ghastly dimension forever. 

And ghastly it is. After just a few steps across the plain, she feels like she’s got gunk in her eyes, black, dusty dirt making her half blind. She can barely see where she steps, still wading through ashes. Her saber would help in that department but she doesn’t want to wake any sleeping dogs with its light, so stumbling through the dark it is.

She remembers the old Jakku tale of the so-called _Underworld,_ supposedly hidden underneath the sand, where the Dead live. This is pretty close to how she’s always imagined the place. “Otherworld” somehow seems too nondescript for what she is presently experiencing. The weirdest sensation really is the silence. Apart from a low buzz from the eternal lightning storm above, everything is _dead_ silent. As if she was the only living creature anywhere near.

Still, the Wizards of the Night Spirit have to be here somewhere, surely? They _have_ to be – because if they aren’t, she has no idea what to do next. Sometimes, destiny has had a way of interfering for her, of dropping her in places where the next step revealed itself, so she could trace her route forward, as if she had been given a map. Or maybe it was the fact that she had always been good at finding things, a scavenger at heart. Or maybe a bit of both, the Force leading her to where she needed to go. Only the Force apparently does not feel inclined to help at present. She feels _nothing._

No pull, no tingle, nothing to suggest she’s going the right way. She’s about to panic, mulling over just going back to her ship and looking somewhere else, when in the distance, appearing from grey fog, rises a giant pyramid. It's as wise as it's high, with a gaping void in the middle and she is pretty sure she should have seen it during her landing but hadn’t. Now, given that she is looking for trouble, that’s probably a very good sign. Nothing about all that seems safe or reassuring at all. Rey presses forward.

It isn’t long until she gets the trouble she came for and it happens much quicker than she anticipated. 

Suddenly the ground shakes. Through the silence a growl rumbles and a shadow emerges from the void in the pyramid. It takes half a second to realise that the shadow is not just moving but _racing_ – thrashing right at her at unnatural speed. Rey barely has time to figure out what it is, only registers “monster” and “teeth”, immediately revised to “a _lot_ of teeth because apparently that thing has three heads”. 

Reflexively, her hands fly to the saberstaff at her back and she doesn’t waste time igniting the yellow blade squaring her shoulders and tugging at the Force for support. Except there’s no support. 

She tries again, bile rising in her throat and her stomach dropping. She can’t reach it. The Force, the Light. There’s nothing. At least nothing that heeds her command. Of course the Force isn’t gone but she realises with a start that the Light side holds no power in this realm. Which leaves…

She shudders, flexing her powers into the other direction just to confirm the ugly suspicion. A little burst of lightning springs from her fingertips, winding around her hand like a snake. No. _No_ , she will not. She won’t have anything to do with those abilities. She’d not going anywhere near the Dark. Never again. She’s a Skywalker now, not a Palpatine. She’s not. Has never been. That part of her died with the Emperor. She will not use it. 

The monster charging at her has no idea that her resolve just likely saved its life and thus, she can’t expect mercy in gratitude. Instead, she has to come up with a way to deal with it without her Force powers. As the beast approaches faster yet, the sheer size of it makes Rey stumble a few steps back. It’s nearly there. 

“Kriff,” she breathes and then does the only thing she can think of doing, powerless as she is. Which is run as fast as her legs can carry.

She runs and runs, east, towards one of the skeletons nearby. Using one of her belts to help pole-climb what must’ve been a rib once, she tries to get higher ground. She’s halfway up to the top when the monster has reached her and the bone she’s clinging on to for dear life shakes precariously. She whips her head around, only to come face to faces with a scaly, ugly beast with three long necks attached to three terrifying heads with wide snouts and black, wild eyes above snarling mouths packed with three rows of sharp teeth – _each._

And all three heads are snapping at her, stretching to reach her and pick her apart, growling and roaring. It’s deafening, the sound alone scary enough to make her brain freeze with fear. She puts her feet firmer against the bone and turns out far enough to allow a few slashes of her saber but that does nothing to deter the creature, if anything it makes it even more agitated. 

_I’m gonna die today_ , she thinks very matter-of-factly. _I’m gonna die before I even know if Ben’s even here._

Her jaw hurts from clenching her teeth together, fruitlessly striking at the ever-moving heads while trying to gain more height on them. It’s useless. She won’t make it without the Force. But she can’t use it. The only thing she could do, maybe, would be… because technically if she’s careful using it, it shouldn’t draw too much from the Dark side… it would be justifiable, given the circumstances that she—

The three heads launch a coordinated attack that nearly knocks Rey down from the rib and she screams for dear life: “You don't want to eat me anymore!”

The heads wobble in confusion. _Promising._

“You are NOT HUNGRY,” she continues, waving her free arm about, her saberstaff a helpful extension. “YOU ARE CALM AND WANT TO LAY DOWN AND SLEEP AND NOT EAT ME!”

Just before Rey is too aware of the powerful flurry of the Dark side flowing through her system, her last-ditch effort succeeds. The monster heads tremble, the mouths hanging loose and lids growing visibly heavier. They look at each other, blinking a few more times and if it’s possible, their horrid grimaces turn almost peaceful as they finally go down, lower and lower until the whole beasts folds in on itself, necks coiling together, and falls asleep.

It’s all Rey can do not to lose all tension in her body from sheer relief. Careful not to wake the monster again, she slides down on the rib and gives it a wide berth walking away. Clearly, the creature was a version of a watchdog, obviously meant to defend the pyramid. Odds are that what Rey is looking for is right there. That carries her forward, even with her blood still boiling and heart still pounding with adrenaline. 

She’ll find these stupid wizards and make them tell her how she can find Ben and if it’s the last thing she does. But first, she must reach that damn pyramid. It hadn’t looked as far away before but now it seems she’s been walking forever and it only appears further away.

Except…

When she looks around there is no lightening anymore. No more fog. It should be pitch black but she can still see. Or can she? Where is she going anyway? What did she want again? Something about a pyramid? Or...wizards? No, that can’t be. And what are those weird appendages growing from her upper dangly bits? She looks at them in wonderment. Is that walking what the bottom dangly bits are doing? Or has she stopped? What is stopping? What is space? What is life? Nothing! Yes, the answer is nothing! There is only night. Only dark. Only the spirit.

_Rey._

A whisper. Faint. Soft. Low. Beckoning.

_Rey._

She shakes her head, awakening. Everything is foggy. She can’t move. Where is she? There was something she wanted, something important. Ben. She tries to move her lower dangly bits, her legs! Her feet. But she can't. They are planted in something sticky, she can’t move them. Only her arms. Her arms! They can reach for–– Her saberstaff! It’s gone. 

She struggles against it but to no avail. At least her eyes finally open.

Maybe they should have stayed closed.

Without being able to make sense of much, Rey realises that she is stuck on the bottom of a giant arena watched by a thousand beady, yellow eyes.

Her blood freezes with the memory of Exogol flashing back to her, of ranks upon ranks filled with cloaked figures cheering her grandfather and his megalomania. To this day, she’s not even sure those figures where even real or just figments of Palpatine’s demented imagination, puppets and illusions like Snoke had been. 

When Ben had brought her back, she’d seen into his mind, seen what revelations Palpatine had offered him - about it being the Emperor who had haunted him all his life, who’d created Snoke as a vessel to mold him, who had pulled all the strings to create Kylo Ren. A fate cruelly sealed by none other than Luke Skywalker. Revelations about Rey, too. About her lineage. The other thing she’d seen in Ben’s mind was how little he was impressed with all those revelations. At that point, he had let go of the past and started making his own destiny. Palpatine thought he was still working Ben Solo, still pulling the strings of Kylo Ren, but he’d underestimated him and that had rattled him.

The Emperor had wanted to destroy the last remaining Skywalker; surely he had wanted an audience for that, fabricated or no. Well, all he got was an audience for his demise brought about by that very same man. All those hooded figures had watched their master die and then perished themselves.

  
Very much un-perished and also uncloaked, however, are the creatures staring down at her from the darkness above. They all look very lively and naked, for lack of a better word. Which would be more disconcerting if they had a body to speak of. For all intents and purposes, they look rather  _ tiny. _ The beings facing her are mostly made up of heads, large ones with small eyes and a giant mouth packed full of large teeth dripping with saliva, stuck on a tiny reddish body held afloat by leathery wings flapping endlessly. They look borderline comical but Rey does not feel like laughing. Mostly because she can’t move and is completely at their mercy.

“What do you want from me?” She bites out, deciding that attack is the best form of defense. 

“We,” says one creature. “Could,” says another. “Ask,” another. On the left. “You.” On the right. “The.” In the middle. “Same.” Somewhere in the back? “Thing.”

They're speaking as a hive mind and Rey is disoriented simply trying to figure out which word came from where exactly, so she gives up trying and opts to just not question what is happening at all. That seems wisest. When they keep talking in this weird way, as if all their mouths were connected to one giant brain, she isn’t as thrown.

“How dare you enter our dwelling?” They ask. “How dare you bewitch our warden?”

“Your warden tried to eat me, maybe you should feed him more often,” she snaps and the creatures hiss in distaste. 

“You lack respect,” the answer is prompt and echoed through the arena by a thousand voices. “Careful, or you’ll face the Night Spirit.”

_Bingo._

“So you’re them? The Wizards of the Night Spirit?” Rey asks, electing to ignore their theatrics and get straight to the point. She will _not_ be intimidated by the boogie-men for Ewok children. 

“You know of the wizards?” They ask and she could be wrong but they sound almost flattered.

“I do,” she says and, just to stroke their egos, she adds: “Every child knows you on the other side.” (Which is not technically a lie, if by ‘the other side’ you mean Endor and by ‘every child’ you mean Ewok pups.) “I have come here looking for you to ask for your help.”

“We are not in the business of helping humans,” the wizards say. “Unless the human has something to offer us in return.”

_If you are persuasive_ , Maz had said. Then they might help, those peculiar wizards. But what does Rey have to offer? Unless…

“Do you not wonder how I got here when you haven’t been able to leave in millenia?” It’s worth a try and judging by the silence that follows, she has their full attention now. “I can open the bridge. If I’m back on the other side, I can get you out of here. All I need is your help finding someone who is trapped somewhere in this galaxy. Once he’s free, so are you.”

The silence is taut and seems endless. Instead of an answer, all she gets for what feels like ages is a thousand eyes staring her down - until all of them say in unison: “We must convene with the Night Spirit.”

And then all eyes simultaneously close and they start humming, every note known to men, and probably quite a few only bats can hear, too. It’s a terrifying but strangely beautiful sound. At least for a few moments, then it becomes tedious and just won’t stop. Rey still can’t move.

After what feels like a lifetime, all eyes open again and they speak. “We accept your offer.” Rey breathes a sigh of relief. “Who is it that you seek in the Dead Space?”

“A man,” she replies, quickly before they change their minds. “A human man. He must’ve come here – _appeared_ here– four months ago. He would have been weak, brought by...magic.” (Not exactly true, probably, but if they’re wizards, they’re more likely to understand that concept.)

“But he lived?” They ask.

“I...I think so. I hope so.”

“If he lived, he was cast out.” They say mysteriously.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What lives here, is removed,” they say, as if that clears anything up.

“I don’t understand!” Frustrated, she feels like kicking something but she can’t move her damn legs.

“The Charon,” they say. “They rule the galaxy. They are the only things that live. The only thing but us. But the Night Spirit cloaks us in shadows, so they can’t sense us. But they do sense all else that lives. They find what lives and erase it from this realm.”

Rey’s heart sinks. _Erase it?_ So Ben made it here only to be erased? That makes no sense. She won’t accept that.

“No, he’s not dead, I know it!” She has to believe that and what choice does she have? The creatures don't emote, apparently they don't care for her struggle a great deal.

Instead the choir says: “We must convene with the Night Spirit.” And once again, they start _humming._

This time, there’s nothing charming about it at all. Rey wants to scream. And to _move_ but she can’t. Her hands turn into fists, darkness gnawing at her consciousness. It’s an effort to stay calm and push it away. The humming isn’t helping.

Then, finally: “The Night Spirit is all-knowing,” they say, eyes open. Then nothing again for a while. They are really testing Rey's patience.

“And?” Rey presses testily.

“The Night Spirit knows of a living thing that entered this realm at the time you say. The Night Spirit knows where the living thing, your human, appeared. The Night Spirit knows not if the human is still there.”

“Then how can he be all-knowing?” Rey asks before she can stop herself and who could blame her? These flappy bastards are _annoying._

“Do you want our help or not?” This is the first time only one wizard spoke and Rey gets a sense that he did so out of turn, mostly because more than a few heads of his peers turn their scrutiny on him.

“Yes,” she says, drawing the focus back to herself. It seems enough to appease them.

“We will provide a Spirit Guide to show you the way,” they say. “But we do not promise that your human will be found.”

“Oh, he will be found,” she says and tries to sound convincing. “I guarantee.” 

Despite her expectations, nothing happens. No one acknowledges her shaky promise, no one makes a move to free her from her immobility, no one does a _thing._ She looks around but no wizard even blinks.

“So?” She asks. “Are you letting me go now? Do I get my staff back?” No reaction. She groans. “Could I have my staff back, _please_?”

And just like that she’s standing next to the _Lyra_ , the belt she left at the skeleton rib out on the plain and her saberstaff back where she’d put them at the start of her walk to the pyramid. The pyramid has disappeared into the distant fog again and everything could have been a very elaborate, very _weird_ hallucination, where it not for the single wizard-creature fluttering at her eye level, a few safe paces away, staring at her. It’s the one who spoke out of turn in the arena. Seems like he drew the short straw there.

“That all just happened right?” She asks him and his disdainful silence is answer enough. She has a feeling that she'll be carrying most of their conversations.

“Okay, so this is my ship," she continues. "It’s not that big but you’re small so we should be alright. I have a spare cot, which means you can even sleep for a bit if you like.”

“The Wizards of the Night Spirit don’t sleep,” he says. 

Seeing him up close like that, Rey wonders how he manages to say _anything._ It looks nearly impossible for him to get his lips to close over those massive teeth to even form words. Except it works somehow and either way, she doesn’t have time to content with all that. 

“So let’s get going, I guess?” She suggests instead and his only response is to fly a little closer to the ship. This is going to be a long journey. “Okay. Um, so what’s your name anyway?”

“The Wizards of the Night Spirit have no names,” he replies dryly.

“Well, I have to call you something, don’t I? Wizard of the Night Spirit is kind of a mouthful,” she says.

The sound the wizard makes is an exasperated _sigh_ from the bottom of his being, if she’s ever heard one. 

“You can call me Earl.”

It takes all she has not to laugh. Because... _what?!_ Absurd as it is, it feels good to even feel the impulse again. The last time she properly laughed was in Ben’s arms.

“Nice to meet you, _Earl_ ,” she says as she unlocks her ship and opens the entry latch. “I’m Rey. I think we’ll have a great time together.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two words: Rey I'm-Wearing-My-Boyfriend's-Clothes <3
> 
> I hope you liked it - I am deeply grateful for any and all feedback. I know the fix-its are springing up like daisies now but I hope you stay with me regardless, I promise it'll be worth it :)


	4. The World Between Worlds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: There are two characters in here that might be completely out of character and also the hard canon facts about the World Between Worlds night be slightly off - forgive me, I just read up on all of this because I never watched rebels.
> 
> In any case, I hope you enjoy this chapter...my hearty feels lighter having written it :)

It does make sense that Ben would have disappeared from realspace and appeared in Otherspace at the same place. That doesn’t mean that Rey is overly eager to return to Exogol. Not that she will arrive shortly, she still has ample time to get used to her destination -because the hyperdrive, for their own safety, has been disabled. 

Earl and her have been flying for three days through grey mist and lightning storms, past uncountable shipwrecks and desolate planets. So far, they had dodged two Charon patrols and Rey had learned that Earl was both (as expected) not a great travel companion and liked to spend time outside her ship because he could survive in space. 

He had claimed he just wanted to “fly outside” as he called it, he said because he was cloaked from the Charon’s ever wandering glares for life, him being outside of the ship would cast a wider net of invisibility over the vessel, but Rey thinks he just doesn’t want to hang out with her. Which is fine, if a little insulting because she is trying really hard. Presently, Earl is flapping about in the back, flying circles in the bulbous middle section of the _Lyra._

“You have portions for three days left,” he tells her. “Our journey is four days still.”

“Thanks,” she calls behind her, rolling her eyes. “I did the math. Come back here, I need you to tell me something!”

Although she can’t see the little creature make his way to her, she can tell he’s annoyed, both because his whole being reverberates with every emotion he is feeling (mostly boredom and disdain) and because by now she knows he’s intrinsically unpleasable, so it’s not hard to guess.

“What did the other wizards mean by the Charon ‘erasing what is alive’?” She asks and it’s the third time in as many days that she tries a variant of this but so far, Earl has not been forthcoming with a satisfying answer. Not for lack of trying, but he speaks in riddles that Rey doesn’t understand. “And try to be specific, please?”

“It really is not so complicated,” Earl sighs, exasperatedly. “If the Charon find something that is alive, they remove it from this galaxy.”

“So they kill it?”, Rey presses. This is the heart of the matter and so far, Earl has been dancing around calling it what it is. If that _is_ what _it_ is, which she is trying to figure out. “I need to know if the person I am looking for is dead. Because if he is, this is all for nothing, do you understand? Please, just tell me: do they kill who they find out here?”

“They used to end life, yes,” Earl says and Rey holds her breath because now they might finally be getting somewhere. “But decaying bodies left too much possibility for life to regrow and feed on what was dead. Now, the Charon _erase._ Like we said. They remove the life from this realm so that there is no trace left of it here.”

“But are they _dead_?” Rey asks, again and her head hurts.

“Depends on what your definition of dead is,” Earl says mystifyingly. “They are not here anymore.”

“Please just tell me if I’m looking for a ghost right now, because if I am, I don’t know what I’ll do,” she pleads and looks over to her companion. There is almost pity in his beady eyes. “I love him, do you understand?”

Earl considers her, his face animated for a second but then it drops once more to impassiveness. “No,” he says. “The Wizards of the Night Spirit don’t love.”

Rey grunts in frustration and focuses back on the controls. Since she has learned to read them following the opposite-is-right principle, she can work the _Lyra_ like before. If only she could work out this little demon beside her.

“What does love feel like? Can you just decide to love something? How do you do that?” Earl asks suddenly after minutes of silence, making Rey jump and doubt that she understood him right. She eyes him questioningly but he doesn’t repeat himself. He just looks at her like he just did something really daring – and like he really wants to hear the answer.

“Love? Hmm, well. To be honest I don’t know too much about it either,” she replies, feeling somehow indebted to him now that he seems to care about something for the first time since they left the Otherworld. “I’ve only ever loved one person and I think I was meant to do that since I was born? We were made to be together, in a sense, so I don’t know if that was a choice. If anything, I tried not to love him for the longest time but it never really worked.”

“But what does it _feel_ like?” Earl asks eagerly, flapping his wings and rising a bit from his usual seat on the console.

“It’s hard to explain,” Rey says. “Do you ever get cold?”

“Wizards of the Nights Spirit–”

“Don’t get cold, yeah, I figured,” Rey sighs. “Love feels like... home. It feels like belonging to something.”

“Like I belong to the Night Spirit?” Earl tries and for the first time he seems actually engaged in something.

“Maybe? It’s not like a possession, though, you don’t own who you love and they don’t own you, you just... belong together. It’s like when you’ve been searching for something and then you find it. And when you lose it, it tears you apart. When you lose it, you’ll do everything to get it back. You know, like, traveling to another dimension and making friends with a small flying wizard creature and then flying through a different galaxy where everything is upside down.”

Earl’s face is a question mark.

Rey tries again. “I don’t know what else to tell you,” she shrugs. “Love is—”

She doesn’t get to finish the thought because a heartbeat later, there’s a deafening rumble and then all of her system’s warnings stop at once, all red lights turn green and readings are perfect and Rey knows she’s in a world of trouble.

“The Charon,” Earl says. “They found us.”

Rey scrambles to whip the _Lyra_ out of autopilot but it’s too late, she’s lost control of the system. She looks out the cockpit and above is a giant ship, blocking out the rest of the galaxy and then the ship is being pulled and Rey can’t do anything to stop it. She calls out to Earl but he has vanished from his spot and then a moment later she can hear the air-seal door of the cargo bay open and shut and has to twist out of the seat to catch a last glimpse of the wizard, flying out into space, abandoning her.

“Kriff, Earl,” she mutters, “Just when we were starting to become friends.”

There’s no time to dwell on his betrayal though, she has to figure out a way to get out of this. She climbs out of the pilot seat and makes a move for the compartment where she stored her saberstaff but then remembers that she can’t use the Force here. She opts for one of Maz’ blasters in storage and positions herself in front of the rear door, waiting for whatever comes next.

The ship halts and from what she can gather from the viewpoint in the back is that she’s in a dark hangar bay, nothing polished like the First Order star destroyer bays but grimey and disgusting-looking. Next thing she knows, the cargo bay door opens, the air-sealed door following suit and then she stands in direct line of fire, faced with what must be seven Charons. Which is a sight she could have gone her whole life without: they stand on four hairy grey legs, holding up dark brown spider bellies, torsos with two arms on either side with triple-clawed hands and their faces -, _skies,_ their faces are like those of giant bugs with pincers, their eyes multi-faceted black baubles.

In their four hands each, they carry four ancient looking blasters, each the size of a human arm, Rey looks at her tiny blaster and decides to raise her two arms in the air. The Charon talk to each other in a weird clicking language and on a cue that Rey hasn’t understood, they part in the middle and reveal an eighth, unarmed member of their party who raises its two upper arms and shoots something at Rey.

The realisation that she has just been cast in a milky white net of sticky gunk hits the same moments that she’s encased fully and drops to the ground like a sack of flour.

She struggles to free herself but it’s no use, she’s immobile and helpless as she feels her cocoon being picked up and carried. She can’t open her eyes to see and it’s getting harder to breathe as she’s being transported by the ever clicking Charon, who seem to be conversing about something - likely her fate. She ponders how they will kill her, if maybe she’s going into an incinerator - or perhaps they will eat her. That’s just two ways she can come up with that would erase her thoroughly from this world.

She feels like she’d been moving for hours when she reaches number fifteen on her list of ways to die and by then, her anxiety has made way to a certain fatalism. If anything, she just wants it all to be over. But instead of being lowered into a pit of acid, when she is finally put down it’s gentle and quiet. The clicks grow fainter and fainter. Her captors have just put her somewhere and left. She struggles for a while after, but it’s taking up so much air that soon, she gets dizzy and passes out.

She comes to after an undetermined amount of time, awoken by the sensation of being in motion again. But this time, it’s not the feeling of tripple-clawed hands holding her, but something bigger, like she’s been loaded onto a cart. Both her sides feel restricted, like there is something lying beside her. Maybe she’s not the only cocoon in transport. Maybe they’ll be thrown into a black hole together.

She tugs at the Force, finding the light ever evasive and the dark ever compelling. It would be so easy now to let go and annihilate her captors but she knows if she pushes an inch too far, she won’t come back from it — and before she takes that step, she needs to be absolutely sure that there is no other way. Blind, she tries to listen to any indication but other than hissing machinery, she can’t make out a thing. Then she feels herself tumbling down, rolling, hitting something and then nothing but gravity.

_Falling_ , she thinks, panicked, _I’m_ _falling!_ Maybe they’re throwing her into a galactic volcano. Trying to control herself as best as she can, she draws from the Dark side, just a little and the lightning that sparks all around her body burns away the Charon’s net just in time to see the gaping darkness ahead. She barely has time to register that this is probably indeed a volcano when the void takes her, engulfs her fully and then she can’t move at all.

Try as she might, all she does is keep falling and falling, like there is no end. She passes through some kind of blue mist once but then the fall just continues. That is until it doesn’t. There’s a pull, violent and painful and she is jerked back a couple of feet higher, only to then crash down fully on the ground with a thud - and full on her face.

“Ouch,” she mumbles, wondering if this is the afterlife. She doesn’t feel dead, though. Experimentally, she tries to move her limbs again and finds that not only does she have her motor control back, she can even sit up. The impact of the drop hasn’t done too much damage - only her hair tie has gotten lost. She couldn’t tie her hair back anyway with her shaking hands. For a while she just sits here, trying to make sense of where she’s landed.

She finds that there’s nothing to make sense of. For all intents and purposes this place shouldn’t exist. Around her, it looks like pure deep space, nothing but pitch black sky and stars in the distance, yet she is not on the ground on some planet, she is sitting on what looks like a street, a path, bplack as the sky but beneath it and around it, is nothing. Nothing but the path winding in every possible direction. She looks up, seeing that another path curls just above her head. Maybe she _is_ dead after all. There’s no way this place is real. 

Chancing it, she tries to stand up and after a few tries, manages to with her legs barely tremoring anymore. Where the Force is she? She tries to listen for a sound and for a while there is nothing, until—

“These are your first steps,” is the first in a string of whispers she can make out and follows the voice.

“I don’t want to be a Jedi,” a little boy says on the verge of tears, “I wanna stay home, with you... and Dad!”

“Someday, I will be the most powerful Jedi ever,” another boy says, older and angrier.

“No, come back!” Rey stops short. That one was her.

“Don’t worry, I feel it too.” 

_Ben!_ Rey spins around, that was Ben’s voice! She staggers backwards, trying to focus on his voice through the rising calls in the dead space. And suddenly she understands.

This place, whatever it is, is not Otherspace and it isn’t realspace or hyperspace either. It’s an entirely different thing and it’s bustling with the Force. This place _knows_ her. She gathers that it must not be a linear plain, like the dimensions she came from: the rules about the natural order of things don’t apply here. It’s a different sort of realm, supernatural, deeper down and darker even than Otherspace. Only... it doesn’t feel dark at all. It doesn’t feel light either. It just _is._

She listens inside herself, tries to tap into the Force and where before she’d felt edges, a divide right down the middle of herself, the Light and the Dark, now there is only the Force, only one entity inside her, all around her. She kicks off from the path, trusting that she will soar and she does, a few feet, and up and up until she can easily step on the next pathway above her. When her feet touch the ground again, there’s a little burst of lightning but it doesn’t scare her here.

This is what the wizards meant, she’s sure of it. It’s not Otherspace but what is here does not live up there, or out there - she isn’t sure where, in relation to space, this place is, but she’s sure it’s where the Charon cast their living things out to. And if she was brought here, maybe Ben was brought here. She tries to feel him, taps into the grey Force and searches for his Force signature. She comes up blank, only feels her own body tingle with the new sensation of using her powers without guilt. 

“Be with me,” she whispers and closes her eyes. She’ll find him somehow, she has to.

A few breaths, a couple more whispers and Rey looks around again. She has nothing but a faint feeling but it’s enough to try. She walks. The pathways seem never-ending and she has no idea how long she spends trying to find what she’s looking for. On the way, she sometimes passes somewhat translucent gates. The first one naturally catches her interest but upon further examination, nothing happens and so she continues on her trail.

It’s maybe the fifth or sixth of these portals that feels distinctly different, that calls out to her. Approaching it, she feels anguish. All encompassing and devastating. It feels very familiar. It’s loss, she knows it from how her stomach drops and she remembers instantly the endless days and nights on Tatooine, yearning for someone she can’t touch, trying to imagine another version of events where things could have been different and then falling apart all over again when she realises it doesn’t make a difference. Hating herself for what she did or didn’t do... wishing she was with him. 

There’s a sound coming from the other side of the portal and as Rey takes another step forward, a scene emerges, faint at first but then solid. Somehow, Rey knows that if she were to take another step, she would be on the lush field she sees before her. 

It’s serene, the most beautiful place shes ever seen. Across the field there are mountains to one side and in the distance, a rocky cliff with a city built on top of it and waterfalls running down the sides of the hill. There’s a flowery scent wafting over to her and she breathes it in, hopes that it can lift the heaviness around her heart but it can’t. She feels so sad, it’s like she’s being swallowed whole by despair and not even the most breathtaking sight can make it better. But there has to be a reason she is being shown this.

That’s when a shadow catches her eye, on the field, standing there unmoving. No, not a shadow, a silhouette. A tall man in a black cloak. 

Ben! 

It has to be. She has no idea what he is doing on that planet but finally she knows she’s made it. Her feet move on their own accord. She found a way to get to him, she finally found— 

And once again, something yanks her away. She wishes people - or the darn universe - would just stop doing that to her already! She’s so close! Let her have this now. She whips around, trying to find who would stand in her way so close to reaching her goal and then stops short at the side of another woman, a Togruta woman to be precise.

“That’s the wrong Skywalker, I’m afraid,” she says, her full lips curled almost into a smirk, but then she adds more solemnly: “That’s his last time setting foot on Naboo, mourning his wife’s death.”

“What?” Rey says, confused. “Wrong Skywalker?! What do you— who are you?”

“Ahsoka Tano,” the other woman says and holds out her hand for Rey to shake. “But names don’t really matter much around here. You’re Rey, right?”

“How do you know that?” Admittedly, after everything she’s been through and has seen in her life, Rey really shouldn’t be surprised but she’s still perplexed. She has never seen this Ahsoka before, yet she seems to know her. How is that possible?

“We’ve both had our lives turned upside down by Skywalker men,” Ahsoka shrugs, as if she’d heard Rey think. “Come on, we’ve been expecting you. I’ll take you where you need to go.”

Rey doesn’t even think to move. She doesn’t trust this. She doesn’t know her.

Ahsoka notices her reluctance only a few paces further away and then turns around languidly, like she has all the time in the world.

“I know who you’re looking for and I can show you how you’ll get to him,” the woman says and Rey’s heart skips a beat. “Ben is here.”

_What the kriff_ , Rey thinks and starts moving. If this woman tries to deceive her, she’ll have another thing coming. In this place, she has a sense that she’d be unstoppable when it comes to having to use the Force, so she walks - at first a few paces behind Ahsoka, then eventually beside her. And curiosity gets the better of her.

“What is this place?” She asks, trying to keep up with Ahsoka’s brisk step.

“Not really a place, more of a state of being, if that makes sense,” the Togruta answers easily. “I like to call it the _World Between Worlds._ Time and space don’t exist here, at least not in the linear sense. You see all these portals?”

“Yeah.”

“They’re entry points to various important moments in time,” Ahsoka keeps explaining. “They’re different in some sense for anyone who comes through here. It’s a good thing I found you when I did. Had you gone to Naboo the damage would have been minor... although had Vader sensed how strong you are, you might’ve still derailed the future... but if you’d chosen another portal, with another moment you might have felt compelled to alter, things could have gone down pretty disastrously.”

“That was Darth Vader?” Rey asks, calling back to mind the grieving figure on a field of pretty flowers, desolate enough to ripple through time and space.

“Like I said, wrong Skywalker,” Ahsoka says. “You probably followed the signature and wound up two generations off.”

“How do you know all of that?” Rey still struggles to wrap her head around what is happening. “What are you doing here?”

“Well that’s a long story and I don’t think we have that kind of time. Then again, all I have is time really,” Ahsoka muses, softly nudging her around a split in the path. “That’s the funny thing about this place. In the _World Between Words_ , there is only _now_. I am here now, you are here now. But in realspace, even in Otherspace, we might not be here. We might not get born for another millenia, or maybe we’ve already died years ago. Maybe up there, I made it out of here. Maybe your big love story is already the stuff of legend... Anyway, this is us.”

The destination they’ve apparently reached looks no different than the rest, except that it’s a little platform like the ones leading to the portals and there is no portal here. Other than that, it’s the same light path surrounded by nothingness as everywhere else. To illustrate her confusion, Rey turns around to Ahsoka and shrug at her questioningly. 

“The Daughter will be right here,” Ahsoka replies, a reassuring cadence to her voice. “Just give it a moment.”

A second later, from nowhere it seems, a fat, yellow convor comes flying, circles over their heads and then lands on another portal that materialises at the end of the platform.

“There she is,” Ahsoka announces.

“That’s a bird,” Rey says dryly.

“Technically,” Ahsoka says. “Her name is Morai... but she’s much more than a bird. She’s the Daughter.”

“Whose daughter?” Rey asks.

“The _Father’s_ daughter, of course,” Ahsoka says, like that should mean anything to Rey but instead of explaining anything further, she just holds up a finger and says: “Just wait.”

And then the convor flaps its wings and once Rey turns back to Ahsoka, her eyes have gone white and when she speaks, she sounds like a different person.

“Rey, I am happy to finally meet you,” she says and Rey looks to the bird again, its eyes glazed over, too, and then back at Ahsoka, who is not Ahsoka anymore. “Don’t be alarmed. She allows me to speak through her when the need arises. I’ve been waiting for you. You’ve come to collect your Other.”

It’s a statement of fact and Rey thinks she might be questioning this but something about this bird feels safe, _good_ , like she can trust it, so she does.

“Is he here? Is he alive?” Rey asks, trying to breathe normally, daring to hope.

“Yes and no,” the Daughter replies. “He is here, preserved, but not alive, but you’ve come to rectify that.”

“I did,” Rey says quickly. “But I don’t understand. How…?”

“When he healed you after the battle of Exogol, Ben Solo’s life force became too fickle to sustain his body;, he collapsed in your arms. In your distress, you’ve sent him to another plain. You shifted him from dimension to dimension, into Otherspace.”

“I didn’t know,” Rey mutters. “I had no idea I could do that! I didn’t _want_ to do that.”

“Oh, but you saved his life,” the Daughter smiles. “Exogol is so close to the Kathol rift, the Charon were alerted to his presence immediately and collected him to erase him from Otherspace, sending him here. I managed to suspend him in that state, dying but not dead. You can save him, can’t you, Rey?”

_Can she?_ Rey positively gapes at the other woman, this is all a bit much to take in.

“I can heal him, I think,” she mutters. “Restore his life Force.”

“Ah yes,” the Daughter nods. “Then you already know what to do. I have kept him out of harm’s way, just through this portal. But be gentle, it’s just been a moment for him since he went under.”

Ahsoka, or the Daughter, is pointing at the portal the bird sits on and Rey lakes one last look around and starts walking. Inside the gate it’s pitch black and doesn’t clear up as she approaches. Passing through it is a leap of fate. She can’t see, can’t be completely sure that it’s all not just a cruel trick, but what choice does she have? If this is her chance to save Ben, she has to take it. One deep breath and she steps through it. There’s more darkness on the other side — but there, a few paces away under a single cone of blue-ish light, lies Ben, just like he had when he faded away in her arms on Exogol.

She breaks into a run to get to him without even properly realising it. Mechanically, as if on auto-pilot, she drops down to her knees once she’s reached him and gathers him up into her lap, it isn’t easy because as dead weight goes, he has a lot. She always forgets how tall he really is. The hardest part is to keep focused on the task at hand. She should waste no time healing him but for a moment she is paralyzed by the simple fact that he’s real. Real and there, solid in her arms. 

The wounds that he had on his face from the battle have been healed, by the Daughter through Ahsoka, Rey presumes, and instead of his clothes (which she is wearing), he is dressed in a grey robe, the material thick and scratchy, like her arm guards. This too, must be the Daughter’s work. Rey has no idea how she deserves to be so lucky. How she gets to run her fingers across his forehead, tuck a few strands of black hair behind his ears and know that she has gotten to him, that she really found him, here, at the end of every galaxy, dimension and state.

_Focus_ , she tells herself and stares at his face as she presses her hand on his heart and pushes every last bit of his life that is still inside her, back into him. She watches the colour return to his face, sees his cheeks go from pale to pink. The moment his heart beats hard under her palm for the first time, she wails.

“Come back to me,” she mumbles between sobs, feeling how life returns to his body, sensing that yes, it’s working, he’s nearly there. She almost has him back.

And then it’s done. There’s nothing left of him inside her, she even spared a good bit of her own life force, just to make sure and she waits for him to open his eyes but he doesn’t. His heart under her hands has stilled and her crying stops, replaced by horror. _No_. This can’t be. It has to be enough! 

She lowers him onto the ground, desperation gripping her, making her short of breath and manic. She places her hands on his chest and presses down, hard. This could get his heart going again, Finn had taught her. 

_Bang on that chest, against and into the ribs - and you must at least break one or you’re not doing it right_ , he had told her. So she pumps until she hears an ugly, bone-chilling crack. The good rib she’d just healed, broken again. It doesn’t matter, he has to make it! 

She crouches over his massive frame, using both her hands to cover his nose and next, covers his mouth with hers to breathe air back into his lungs. She repeats this multiple times but to no avail. 

“No, no, no, no, no,” she mutters and then does the only other thing she can think of, which is to shock him, lightning blasting from her fingertips into his body, into his heart. And then…

And then it beats, even harder than before. Rey frantically pushes her curls out of her face, wanting to see, needing him to look at her. Instead, he coughs hard, breathes in deeply and shoots up with no warning, nearly head-butting her. It’s a testament to her reflexes that she can get out of the way. But now he sees her alright.

Their eyes meet and for a moment, she’s back with him on Exogol, when she woke up in his arms, disoriented at first but then just so happy to see him, so happy to get a chance to know him. Ben, the real Ben, unburdened and free. Now he’s the one bought back from the dead and when he smiles at her, she thinks she would do it all over again and more, just for this moment. His hand finds its way to cup her cheek, she can’t believe this is real. He looks so _happy_. She probably has snot running down her nose but she doesn’t give a damn. This is everything that matters.

“Rey,” Ben breathes, completely enthralled and she, in turn, stops breathing entirely. It takes two seconds before he realises that something is off. “Where are we?”

“Later,” she bursts out, “I’ll explain later.”

For now, all he gets is a hug, so long and so tight, she might just break another rib in the process.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You thoughts and comments are ever so appreciated! Thank you so much ❤️
> 
> Big shoutout to my beta Cookie who continues to reel in my insane run-on sentences.


	5. Escape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go again. Ben and Rey have to make their way out and Rey has a small crisis of faith.
> 
> I want to thank you for the continuous support in the form of your comments, they really mean the world! <3

“Ow,” Ben says, his fingers digging into Rey’s back as she holds on to him for dear life. “Too tight.”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” She lets him go immediately and scurries away a little, kneeling beside him. Seeing him alive and hearing him speak is turning out to be a lot to process. “I think I hurt your rib, wait, let me.”

After all she has been through to get here, to him, keeping focused on any one thing is hard but she tries with the easy task first, healing where she hurt him. Again.

As she delves into the Force to patch up the cracked rib and bruising flesh above, she checks for his emotions. Removing her hand from his now healed chest, she finds relief but mostly confusion. The last time she did this, she had tried to kill him before. That flash of memory hits hard enough to make her look at her hands in shame. They should never have tried to hurt him.

“What happened, where are we?” Ben rasps. She sees him scan the void around them from the corner of her eye.

“Hard to explain, it’s complicated,” she replies, daring to search for his gaze again. It’s already fixed on her. “What do you remember?”

“You,” he says, a small lopsided smile passes over his features but is soon replaced with puzzlement as he tries to recall what happened to him. “And then nothing. How long was I out?”

“For a while.” 

So he really has no idea how much time as passed since he’d collapsed on Exogol.

“Only I wasn’t just _out,_ was I? I died,” he says, a statement more than a question and it’s a bit of a relief that Rey can answer it anyway.

“Almost,” she says. “I...snapped you out of realspace before you could and then you ended up here. So now I’m getting you home.”

As he looks around once more, trying to figure out where ‘here’ is, she has time to collect herself a little and take stock of him. He looks good, healthy, like instead of coming back from the very-nearly dead, he’s just woken up from a rejuvenating nap. 

She should be so happy and she is but now that she sees him again, her head is swimming with the practicalities of it all. She realises with a start that she hasn’t thought this moment all the way through. What does she say to him now? How can she begin to explain what her life has been like without him in it? Does she tell him that she nearly died mourning him? That she had lost all hope? Does she tell him she loves him?

That’s when the other shoe drops in her head: What if he doesn’t love her? 

Yes, she loves him and she is sure she does but essentially, they barely know each other. Not like this, not the way they are now. They know each other as enemies, as soldiers on opposing sides, contentious, intimate foes. Yes, they are one in the Force, two that are one—but maybe she made everything else up in her own head? She has had months to come up with all the ways they belong together but for him it’s only been moments since they faced Palpatine. And only hours since she’d struck him down on the ruins of the Death Star. 

What if that’s what he remembers most? What if he doesn’t feel like she does because of it? What if he still remembers the girl who wanted to kill him at every turn? Even if he had come back to her on Exogol, even if he had held her face and took her kiss, it was her that initiated it and he was already dying when it happened. What if, in her months and months in the dark on Tatooine, she just filled in the blanks and assumed he loved her too?

In her sudden turmoil, she has completely missed Ben putting his hand on her knee. His brow is furrowed, mirroring her expression of worry.

“What is it?” He asks. “Is it about this place? Are we trapped here?”

“No, no,” she hurries to calm his rising adrenaline. Because just like that, he’s ready to fight again. Freshly resurrected, he would be all set to go risk his life all over. For her? She isn’t sure. “It’s safe. You were kept here, kept alive until I could get to you.”

“You came back for me,” he says, like that’s a sudden revelation. The muscles around his eyes spasm like that fact threatens to short-circuit his brain.

“You came back for _me_ ,” she tells him. _And I love you,_ she thinks of adding but then she’s afraid of putting any pressure on him. If them together isn’t what he wants it would be unfair to burden him with any expectations. Not after he saved her life. 

She opts for: “It’s the least I could do” instead.

With the mantle of Kylo Ren fully discarded, Ben’s face that has always been expressive is now bleeding emotions. His Force signature reverberates with them, too. It’s joy intertwined with gratitude but prominently it’s the most heartbreaking sense of novelty, like no one had ever done something like this for him. And worst, like he had not expected anyone to do so, ever. It’s enough to make her want to cry and never stop. She wants to say something, _anything,_ to let him know that she will always be there for him, starting this moment but her throat is dry as a bone and the words won’t come out.

It’s Ben who speaks in her stead. His hand moves from her knee to her cheek and her heart drops into the pit in her stomach. His voice is barely a whisper as he leans in. “Rey—”

“Rey Skywalker, it’s time to go,” the Daughter speaks from Ahsoka’s body, breaking the tension like an axe as she appears at the other side of the gate. “You two don’t belong here.” 

Like pirates caught stealing, they jump apart, Rey tumbling backwards, losing her balance rather ungracefully, as opposed to Ben who swiftly jumps to his feet, languid as a cat which seems unfair for a man of his size. She’s mortified as he holds out his hand to help her up. She takes it with no hesitation this time but doesn’t dare to keep holding it, lest doing so would be uncomfortable to him.

With the Daughter watching, they make their way back to the light beyond the void, walking side by side and Rey wishes he would say what he’s started to before they were so rudely interrupted. But he doesn’t, he’s got something else on his mind.

“Rey _Skywalker?_ ” He asks and she can feel his raised eyebrows more than she can see them. “Please don’t tell me we’re related.”

That takes her completely off guard. “Uh, no, no, of course not. It’s...well, while you were _away_ , I kind of moved into Luke’s old house on Tatooine and there was this lady who wanted to know my name and I thought I should, I don’t know, honor his memory.”

“Honor _his_ memory?” Ben repeats and it actually sounds rather prickly. 

_Kriff_ , she thinks and suddenly understands how that must sound to him. He had literally given his life for her and instead of honoring his name and his memory, she had chosen Luke for that gesture, the man who had played a vital part in derailing Ben Solo’s entire life. What a soulmate she is! Now she really can’t blame him if he doesn’t want to be with her. Before she can try and apologise though, they have reached the other side of the portal and the moment has passed. 

“Ah, Ben Solo,” the Daughter says, nodding at him as they arrive by her side. “Awake at long last.”

“Who is she?” Ben half-whispers through tight lips, not fully turning around to Rey, only inclining his head as if he thinks only she can hear him that way.

“She’s, uh, the bird,” Rey answers stupidly, still battling with herself over how to explain herself to him. 

Now Ben does face her, eyeing her like she’s suddenly grown a second head. She gestures at the bird perched on top of the portal and then back to Ahsoka, which does nothing to clear things up for Ben as his expression implies. She can hardly blame him.

“Nevermind,” Rey says. “She helped us. She is the one who kept you alive. Who gave you those clothes.”

Ben glances down at his grey tunic and it’s possibly the first time he notices what he has been wearing and his face when he looks back up at her again nearly has her bursting out in very ill-timed laughter. Displayed on Ben’s features is heavy scepticism, swiftly replaced with the slightest upward tick of his mouth to one side which makes it look utterly sarcastic as he nods a ‘fair enough’-nod and then shrugs fatalistically, so much like Han, Rey actually has a hard time processing it.

“Children, you must go back to your time,” the Daughter says unfazed, in time with an ugly grunt coming from Rey as she tries not to _giggle_ at Ben, of all things. “You must be the balance now. It is the way. Ahsoka will take you as far as she can. I shall find you on the other side.”

With that, Ahsoka’s eyes un-glaze, returning to their blue colour and then the bird starts flapping its wings and disappears again, out of sight, like she has never been there at all. Rey barely makes sense of those ominous parting words and now the Daughter is gone and couldn’t answer Rey anyway.

“There you are,” Ahsoka says in her place. “Let’s get you out of here.”

She leaves them no time to grapple with anything in private, she is marching them at a brisk pace from one corner of the _World Between Worlds_ to another, passing by some familiar corners until Rey thinks they’ve arrived at the exact spot she entered. Except now, there is a new portal there which wasn’t there before. 

_Entry points to various important moments in time,_ Rey recalls Ahsoka telling her. Being thrown into the pit by the Charon and landing here sure was important for Rey, so she thinks this makes sense. This is where they’ll leave.

“Walk through here and it’ll get you out the way you came in, right underneath the Charon’s fortress below the Kathol rift,” Ahsoka instructs. “Once you exit the pathway, you have to climb up the central vent of the volcano, it’s quite a way to go but I can hide you from the Charon for a while, as long as you’re close enough to the border. Once you’re outside the crater, you’re on your own.”

“Why aren’t you coming with us?” Rey asks, befuddled that Ahsoka talks like she’s planning on staying behind. “You said you wanted to make it out of here, too?”

“It’s not my time yet,” the Togruta says evenly. “Someone is coming for me, it’s important that I go with them.”

Rey nods, although it makes her feel sad and guilty for leaving the other woman behind. She likes her and possibly never knowing what happens to her feels wrong. But then again, if what Ahsoka had said about the _World Between Worlds_ is true, then maybe in Rey’s time, she has made it home years ago already. 

“Thank you,” Rey says, accepting Ahsoka’s decision. “For everything.”

“It _is_ the way,” Ahsoka nods. “This will make things right, the two of you. I know it. You’ll achieve what Anakin couldn’t. You did so much he never could. See, you even defeated death.” A sad smile plays on the woman’s lips and for a moment it looks like she wants to say more, turning her attention to Ben but then she apparently thinks better of it and instead gives both of their hands a tight squeeze. “You better go now. Good Luck.”

Ahsoka lets go off them and gracefully drops down into a meditating pose facing the portal, most likely getting ready to use the Force to hide Rey and Ben from the Charon. Rey nods at Ben encouragingly, taking their cue and turns around when Ahsoka moves suddenly, dropping her pose.

“Oh, and make sure the Charon have not figured out that your ship has a hyperdrive,” she says, walking backwards. “If they get their hands on it, they’ll escape Otherspace and do with your galaxy what they’ve done to theirs.”

“I’ll make sure of it!” Rey promises and then Ahsoka smiles at her one more time and then resumes her position, closes her eyes and the Force cracks with her efforts.

“I have no idea what’s happening right now,” Ben pipes up beside Rey, a towering picture of bemusement at the events unfolding in front of him.

“I’ll tell you on the way,” Rey promises. “We need to get my ship back. Do you trust me?”

Ben nods.

“Good,” she says. “‘Cause this is gonna be a steep climb.”

Passing from the World Between Worlds into Otherspace is quick and painless and Rey thanks the stars for these small mercys. Once outside, back where she started, they find themselves on a rocky protrusion in pitch darkness in the center of a volcano. High above them, there’s a small circle of light, which must be the volcano’s mouth, and Ahsoka wasn’t kidding when she said they had a long way to go. But that might be a blessing in disguise.

Rey has a lot to catch Ben up on. She starts telling him about her journey and what she learned on it with the first few feet she scales on the rock. He climbs after her and mostly listens. They’ve come up halfway to the volcano’s edge when she’s arrived at the present.

“So now we have to find my ship and go back to the Otherworld and open the bridge, so I can let the Wizards of the Night Spirits out and then...and then...you know,” she says, placing a careful step unto higher ground. “That’s it.”

“Why don’t we just get out up there?” Ben asks and somehow Rey had a feeling he would. She had thought about this herself when Ahsoka revealed that they’d end up at the main rift. “If the Kathol rift is right on top of our heads, why not use it to cross over into realspace?”

“Because I made a promise,” Rey replies, climbing. “Plus, we would never last a minute flying around here, the Charon would pick us right out of the sky. We need to stay low and get off their radar and then hightail it away from this quadrant.”

“Okay,” Ben says from a few feet below her and she knows he disagrees without having to see him. But he seems to accept her verdict, turning his scrutiny on more pressing matters. “Um, so do you know where it is? Your ship?”

“No idea,” she replies, slightly turning her head so she can hear him better as the wind from above starts howling louder in the crater.

“Great,” Ben calls back.

“Look, I really just planned up to this point,” Rey apologises, raising her voice further. “From now on we just have to—”

“Wing it,” Ben interrupts her, almost yelling at this point. “I’m good at that.”

“I noticed,” Rey fully yells. “Bringing a blaster to a Sith Lord fight.”

He leaves that uncommented. The end of the center vent is in sight.

They scale the rest of the rocks with vigour, Ben picking up speed beneath her. Rey hauls herself across the precipice with a grunt of exertion and then falls onto her back, allowing herself a moment to breathe and stare at the grey mist overhead. Then Ben makes his noisy ascent and she sits back up to help him out of the pit. Only in trying to take her offered hand, he trips, loses his balance and topples over. She falls backwards with him, his heavy body landing on her hard. She would’ve bumped her head hard on the gravel but Ben had the wherewithal to put his palm over her head, catching the blow with the back of his hand.

“Sorry,” Ben mutters but makes no move to roll off of her. Rey finds she doesn’t mind.

“Hi,” she says instead, with what little air is left in her lungs. Ben smiles but then spots something behind her head that gives him pause.

“The bird is here,” he states, shifts his weight and helps Rey sit up.

“Morai,” she exclaims at the Daughter’s corporeal form, struggling to her feet to follow the convor as it chirps something that sounds a lot like ‘hurry’. Ben is up and running behind her in an instant.

Morai flies ahead and behind a small hill, a giant metal and stone structure rises bleak and dark above the barren, rocky landscape. The Charon’s stronghold is as imposing as it is ugly. All hard edges, desolate pieces of concrete sticking out at the sides like thornes. Rey barely has time to look at all the ghastly details of it though, because Morai urges them forward, flying circles, flapping her wings erratically. They don’t have much time. She leads them on, closer to the fortress until they have reached its walls and eventually they reach a locked door.

“Can you open this?” Rey asks Ben. “I can’t use the Force here, everything is upside down. I can’t tap into the Dark Side, I won’t.”

Ben doesn’t question it, he just nods, extends his head and the door cracks open. Morai chirps and inclines her head towards the corridor that reveals itself beyond the opening. Rey knows that this is where she leaves them. This way will lead them to her ship.

“Thank you,” Rey says to the bird and then makes a blind grab at Ben’s hand to pull him after her and they run, trying to be as quiet about it as possible. 

The corridor is dark and smells like death and it drags on and on, winding and twisting. At one point Rey thinks they might actually be running in circles but then finally, out of breath and panting, they reach its end. Around a corner, it opens into a giant hangar, just as desolate and disgusting as the rest of the building. It’s crammed full of ships and parts of them, big and small. Some of them look positively ancient, some shiny and new but Rey can tell even from the most cursory glance that most of them have been stripped for parts in one or the other spots. She hopes that they spared the _Lyra_ that fate.

“Come on,” she whispers to Ben and they use the shadows of the wrecks to shelter them from any possible observer as they try to cover as much ground as they can looking for her ship. 

When Rey finally spots it, of course it’s at the other side of the hangar, terribly exposed. But it can’t be helped. She points it out to her companion and they dart forward, still hidden where they can by the other ships but the last stretch has to be across an open section in plain sight. Instead of the cargo bay doors, Rey heads straight for the escape latch at the belly of the _Lyra_ and ushers Ben inside, only allowing herself to properly breathe once they’re both inside. 

Wasting no time, she makes her way to the compartment by her cot and produces Luke’s old lightsaber and hands it to Ben. She snags her own saberstaff from beneath her bunk and thumbs its yellow blade on, just as a precaution.

“I’ve been holding on to that,” she says when she sees Ben looking from his lightsaber to hers.

“And yours?” He asks, eyes big. “You made that? How did you get it to work? I never got mine right.”

“You mean that could-explode-any-moment-look wasn’t on purpose?” She quips on reflex, knowing full well there’s no time to joke around at present. She feels something looming, closing in.

Ben has a second to react to her dig at his old, unstable crossguard saber with a smirk, then he feels it too. “We got incoming,” he says.

“Kriff,” Rey mutters and that’s when the first blaster shot hits the vessel.

“How many are there?” She bellows at Ben who is already at the viewport. 

“Six,” he says. “No wait, eight. What the _fuck_ are those things?”

“Ben, meet the Charon,” Rey supplies and then rushes to the cargo bay. “We can take eight. If they’re dead, they can’t follow us!”

She thumbs in the code to open the rear doors and Ben is at her side a heartbeat later, lightsaber raised. They look at each other for the briefest of moments and then it begins.

Ahead of them, the Charon are going in blasters ablaze, shooting rounds upon rounds. Ben blocks them at times with his saber, at times with the Force while Rey charges ahead, ducking away from the sticky nets their assailants are also casting their way. It’s messy and loud and quick.

Adrenaline surging, Rey loses any form of combat Leia had ever managed to teach her, instead she just slashes whatever legs or arms she can reach. Soon, it smells like cauterized flesh and innards of Charon, which is a smell Rey has never smelled but it’s so foul, if she wasn’t fighting to stay alive, she’d be sick on the spot. When she is in a tight spot between two of the humanoid-spider-like creatures, Ben steps between them and joins her in close combat. 

United as they are, the Charon drop like flies. Ben strikes low when Rey strikes high, intercepting blaster bolts in mid air and hauling them back at their shooters. This is doubly impressive seeing how he’s practically doing all of that in a _nightgown._ Rey can’t spare too much time being in awe of his though, she has to content with a four-armed attacker with blasters in each hand. It isn’t easy but she does know her way around her staff well enough to disarm the Charon, which in this case means literally dis- _arming_ him. Four limp limbs fall to the ground and her enemy screeches in agony. Behind her, Ben is making equally quick work of the two attackers left on his side of the fight.

But it’s a short lived triumph—as the last of the eight that came for them collapses in a pool of green, gooey blood, the floodgates of the hangar open and what is barreling towards them, can only be described as a _swarm._

“We need to get out of here now,” Rey yells at Ben. 

“I’ll cover you,” Ben calls out and picks up a blaster from the ground, shooting into the hoard of Charon charging at them.

Rey doesn’t wait to start the ship up, trusting that Ben will be on board, firing from the cargo bay doors until they’ve taken off. Moments later, he joins her in the cockpit, bleeding from a nasty gash in his arm.

“You’re hurt!” She says but can’t do much than try and steer the _Lyra_ towards the open hangar gate.

“I’ll be fine,” he says. 

“Strap in in the back,” Rey bellows, satisfied with that reassurance. “It’s gonna get bumpy!”

It does. As she breaks free, the ship is rattled by fire from the fortress itself and a skipped heartbeat later, there are small chaser ships on their tail. They’re lighter and faster but Rey is a better pilot. Still, how she manages to shake them, she doesn’t really know, only that it involves daring zig-zagging through the volcano craters surrounding the Charon’s strong-hold. The last of their pursuers can’t be shaken until they’re in orbit and Rey has the intuition to fly into a space rock, a comet on no set path that orbits the Charon’s home planet. The ship in pursuit had realised her move too late and crashed into the comet’s surface, bursting into stardust.

They are not out of the woods yet but at least the imminent danger has been neutralized. Rey unclips from her seat and rushes into the back. Ben is holding on to the straps of her cot looking green.

“You’d think my Dad taught you to fly,” he half-jokes and squirms free from his confines. “So what now?”

“They did something to the ship,” Rey says, revealing the most troubling revelation of their daring escape flight.

“Did they find the hyperdrive?” Bes asks, immediately alarmed.

“No, but not for lack of trying,” Rey says, recalling the frayed wires she’d noticed right when sitting down in the pilot’s seat. “I have to run a quick system check but I’d say she’s got one more jump in her and then the hyperdrive is toast. But we do need to get out of here. I don’t know if we can risk jumping though.”

“What’s the alternative?” Ben asks.

“Six, seven days of flying through Otherspace,” Rey replies, which she knows full well isn’t much of an alternative at all. 

“We’d be sitting ducks,” Ben remarks rightfully. “Kathol rift is really out of the question?”

“I’m telling you, we’ll never make it,” Rey shakes her head. “We have to get back to Endor. The _Otherspace_ Endor. And just hope that she can still fly once we get there.”

“Sounds like we don’t have a choice, then,” Ben says. “One more jump.”

“One more jump,” Rey echoes and gets to work.

The jump into hyperspace is both relatively uncomplicated and immediately registered by the Charon. Rey knows by how the _Lyra’s_ hailing radar clears up immediately after they make the jump, indicating that there’s a target lock on their backs. This doesn’t pose an immediate threat, however. Their hyperjump to Endor will take two, three hours tops and the Charon’s bigger ships take around seven days to get there. If, however, a patrol is closer to Endor, things might get tricky. But Rey decides to cross that bridge if they get there. 

Once the _Lyra_ is safely on autopilot on its hyperspace path, Rey returns to the living bulb in the back of her ship, watching as Ben finishes up dressing his arm. It’s a blaster scratch, nothing but a superficial flesh wound but she finds herself worrying for him beyond what would be reasonable.

“I need to get out of these rags,” Ben says, looking down at himself before she gets the chance to ask him a fifth time if he’s really sure he’s okay.

“Swap?” She says instead, pointing at his shirt and pants she’s wearing. “I mean...I got my own clothes. I just—this seemed more appropriate for this place.”

“So they _are_ mine,” he says, getting up from the cot, rising to full height. His size combined with the sudden, hungry look in his eyes makes him look dangerously enticing.

“I, uh, your clothes, yeah. Um,” Rey stutters. “I’ll be in there, so you can get changed…I’ll just take them off real quick and then, yeah, you got it.”

She stumbles backwards under his gaze that flickers back and forth between blazing and bemused. In the cockpit, Rey makes quick work of stripping out of his clothes and into her own, crumpled as they are from having been shoved into her scavenger bag.

When she returns Ben’s clothes to him, she doesn’t dare look at him, she just scurries back into the cockpit and closes the door behind her. Only she can’t bring herself to close it all the way. She hovers behind it, holding it ajar and watching Ben as he moves, shrugging off the gray robe, his bare back turned to her. He’s still wearing his black briefs and for a moment she wonders how she Dimension-shifted him from Exogol without his clothes but leave him his underwear. Maybe so she could have something of his to hold on to. Not that she had been conscious of the act in the first place.

It’s just as well. Had she seen him completely naked just then, she probably would’ve had no chance in hell of staying as quiet as she had. So Ben has no idea that she is still watching him like a fiend, following the muscles roll under his skin as he steps into his pants. He turns to pick up his shirt from its place on her cot, that’s when everything goes terribly wrong.

_He sees her._

He sees her staring and lurking and stalking around watching him change! Rey jumps backward but it’s way too late. It’s with her cheeks blushed into what she guesses is purple that she steps back into the living quarter with her head down. She only looks at him when he’s stoically stayed silent for a while, taunting her into interaction.

“You want me to put a cowl on?” He asks and if she didn’t know better, she’d say he is _smug._

“No,” she says reflexively and then notices her error. “I mean I’m sorry. I wasn’t...I didn’t mean to look.”

“Nothing you haven’t seen yet,” Ben shrugs easily. She thinks he might be enjoying this.

“I know,” she says. “But. _You know_?”

Judging by his face, he doesn’t know. And even Rey isn’t all the way sure what she’s saying. But instead of figuring that out, she just rambles on.

“It’s different now, isn’t it? Us together like this, I mean,” she tries, digging her own grave deeper. “After the...after I…”

“After you kissed me?” He guesses correctly.

“That was a spur of the moment kind of thing,” she bursts out, so scared that he’ll hold it against her. “There’s no obligations or anything. Just because we’re a Force dyad —you know, whatever that means— doesn’t mean that you have to, uh, be with me or anything. I don’t expect you to.”

“What?!” Is all he says and she’s way too emotional and anxious to notice that she’s totally lost him.

“I’m sorry I took the Skywalker name, it should have been yours,” she babbles on. _What the kriff is she saying?!_ “I mean, not that I want to marry you. Or maybe I do, I don’t... The point is I _know_ what you sacrificed for me and when you were gone I nearly died and I love you so much, I don’t really know what to do. And that’s a lot to put on someone and you already did so much, I would never ask you to—”

“Rey,” he interrupts and it’s only then that she’s thrown off her tangent. 

Did she just tell him that she loves him? Did she actually just do that? She’s mortified and staring at him, all out of breath. Why did she have to keep _talking?_

For a long moment, Ben doesn’t move, not even his face. But then he slowly closes the distance between them and oh, ever so gently puts his hand on her face, cupping her cheek. It’s big and warm and Rey dares not to breathe.

“I think I loved you way before we even met,” he says under his breath. He sounds and looks utterly sincere, his eyes dark like molasses and just as sweet. “You saved me. Even when you nearly killed me you still saved me. You’re the only one who ever came back for me. You couldn’t get rid of me now if you tried. I have experience following you around, you know?”

And this time, he’s the one kissing her. The words he’s said had been wonderful to hear but the feel of his lips closing over hers is immediately a million times better. 

At first she’s surprised, then ecstatic, then the entire galaxy falls away. She gives back the pressure he gives her, moving her lips against his hungrily, breaking the kiss only to continue it with more urgency and only stops when he grins against her mouth. By now, he’s got both his hands on her cheeks, holding her place. She moves out just enough to take in that wide, toothy smile of his. It splits his whole face in the best way possible. It’s impossible not to mirror it. It’s everything, this moment is _everything._

“I don’t know how any of this works,” she whispers, afraid that even this sound could burst the bubble of perfection she’s finding herself in. But Ben won’t let it. He’s holding on tight.

“Me either,” he says. “Let’s figure it out, huh?”

And then he dives back in. Only this time his hands fall from her face, going exploring, pulling her into him hard. He’s so solid against her, so real. So alive. She could cry. The only reason she doesn’t is because she needs all of her focus to keep kissing him. Her own hands go wandering. She touches his neck, then his chest and wherever she pleases and the minutes trickle by just trying to find which spot she likes best. Not that she could decide. 

And kissing! _Stars_ , kissing him is better than literally everything else. His lips are soft as clouds and he tastes like happiness, like belonging.

She couldn’t say how long this goes on, only that eventually, she has pushed him onto her cot and climbed on top of him. Ben responds with a groan and next thing she knows, he’s flipped her around in one swift movement and is hovering above her. His eyes are dark as sin. When he kisses her again, she pulls him fully on top of her, parting her legs to get him closer and she has no idea what she’s doing, only that it’s good. He pushes his weight into her, rolling his hips against hers and there’s an ache inside her, a familiar one, yet it’s all new with him in her arms. She wants him, needs him now, whatever and however it works. She’s new to it all but he was right, they will figure it out together.

She snakes her hand between their bodies, along his naked chest that is hot to her touch, across his heart that beats like drums. Finally, she’s reached the space between their bodies, where he’s been thrusting against her, driving her half-mad. But the second she touches him there, he pulls away. He’s clamouring upwards like she’d blasted him with lightning and breathes heavily.

“Not like this,” he mutters. “I need this to be...you deserve more than this dirty old ship.” He looks around and she can’t say she blames him but still, the sudden loss of his body feels like she’s been doused with cold water. “Can we just lie here for a while?” He asks, sinking down onto his elbow again, shifting so she can put her head on his chest. His arm closes her in, fingers drawing circles on her back. “Just hold me,” he mumbles under his breath and who is she to deny him this? Who is she to deny herself? This is _everything._

An hour later, Rey reluctantly peels off of him, just in time to take back control of the ship before it’s about to reach their destination.

“Dropping out of hyperspace in three, two, one,” Rey announces for Ben’s benefit, so he can strap in once more on her cot.

And it’s a good thing he did because as soon as they make planetfall, the ship starts falling apart.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will they ever catch a break? Stay tuned! ;)

**Author's Note:**

> [Dimension Shift](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dimension_Shift)   
>  [Otherspace](https://swfanon.fandom.com/wiki/Otherspace)   
>  [Galaxy Map w/ Moddell Sector and Unknown Regions](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/37/d4/d5/37d4d5b0b422a7c90ed3144c83b0c870.jpg)
> 
> ***
> 
> I will love you forever if you join me in this. I will do it alone if I have to but I'm happy for any fellow passenger on this journey with me. Will you help me get our boy back?
> 
> I hope, if nothing else, this can cheer you up a bit if you are sad, I know writing it helped me :) Thinking of all of you and I'd love to hear your thoughts!


End file.
